"What would you do? what would you say now, if you were in such a position?"—Thackeray.

"Thackeray is always protesting that no good is to be done by blinking the truth. Let us have facts out, and mend what is bad if we can"—Trollope.

Mr. John Boler had been in the hotel business, as he phrased it, ever since he was born. Before he could walk he had been the "feature" of his father's summer hotel, where he was the only baby to be passed around and hugged into semi-unconsciousness by all the women in the house. Because of the scarcity of his kind, too, he was subjected to untold agony by the male guests, most of whom appeared to believe that the chief desire of his infantile heart was to be tossed skyward from hour to hour and caught in upstretched hands as he descended with a sickening sense of insecurity and a wild hysterical laugh. In these later years he often said that he would like to know who those summer fiends were who had made his infancy so full of narrow escapes from sudden and violent death. Finally he thought he had revenge at hand. A benevolent-looking old gentleman came puffing up to the desk of the Boler House, and, after registering, proceeded to question the genial proprietor as to his identity.

"Dear me, dear me," he puffed, "and so you are the son of old John Boler, the best hotel-keeper the sun ever shone upon! Why, I remember tossing you up to the rafters under the porch of your father's house when you were only the size of a baked apple and mighty nigh as measly looking. Well, well, to be sure you had grit for a young one. Never got scared. Always yelled for more. I believe if you had batted your soft little head against the roof you'd have laughed all the louder and kicked until you did it again," and the old man chuckled with the pleasure of age and retrospection.

"Yes, I remember well," said Mr. Boler, casting about in his own mind for the form of revenge he should take on this man now that he was to have the chance for which he had so longed and waited.

His first thought was to put him in the room next to the three sporting men who played poker and told questionable stories of their own exploits after two o'clock every night, but that hardly seemed adequate. The room adjoining the elevator popped into his head. Every time the old gentleman fell asleep bang would go that elevator door or bzzzz would start off the bell so suddenly that it would leave him unnerved and frantic in the morning. But what was that? What John Boler yearned for was to make the punishment fit the crime, and, after all these years of planning and wishing for the chance, here it was, and he felt that he could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, bad enough.

So with a fine satire which was wholly lost upon his victim, Mr. Boler ordered him taken to the very best room in the house, and made up his mind that after disarming all suspicion in that way he would set about his revenge, which should take some exquisitely torturous form.

All this had run through his mind with great rapidity while the old gentleman talked. Then Mr. Boler turned the register around, wrote "98" opposite the name. Said he should be delighted to show his own mettle to one of his father's old guests, called out "Front," and transferred his attention to a sweet-faced girl who stood waiting her turn to register.

"A small room, please," she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. Mr. Boler knew just what it meant in an instant. He knew that she was not used to hotels—that she was uncertain what to do, and that she wanted her living to cost her as little as possible. She was evidently a lady, and quite as evidently from some small town.

"Front," he called again. "Show this lady to 96. Step lively." Front grinned. Ninety-six was a mere closet with no window except one facing a dark shaft. Indeed, it had once been the dressing-room and clothes press for the adjoining suite, and so far as Front could remember had never been used as a sleeping apartment by any one except the valet of a certain French gentleman who once occupied 98.

"Took my revenge on the wrong person that time," mused Mr. Boler as he saw the lady enter the elevator. "Now I wonder why I did that?" But Mr. John Boler had his little superstition, as most of us have, and whenever he was moved by a perfectly blind impulse to do a thing, he always believed that "something would come of it sure," as he expressed it. "Never knew it to fail. Of course I don't believe in such things; but—" and then he would laugh and go on believing in it as implicitly as ever.

All day he brooded over what he should do to old Winkle, as he called the man in 98, and as surely as his mind grew exhausted and his various plans fell through, his thoughts would catch a glimpse of the timid girl in the next room, and he would smilingly wink to himself and say, "Something will come of it, something will come of it sure. Never put a guest in that beastly room before, and I had nothing against her. Must have been him It was after." He always called his blind impulses "It" when he was utilizing them for superstitious purposes or to quiet his reason.

"I'll bet that girl being in that closet will be the means of getting me even with old Winkle yet, and she is not used to city hotels. She'll think that it is all right and she will most likely be out all day. It's not so bad to sleep in after all. Quietest room in the house."

The next morning Mr. Winkle strolled into the office and harassed Mr. Boler about his infancy, reminding him that he had possessed a very weak stomach. "And who wouldn't," thought that gentleman indignantly, "if he was pitched about like a bale of hay from morning till night by every fool that got hold of him?" but he smiled pleasantly and said no doubt he had been very much like other infants, judging from the way he grew up. He looked upon a baby as the embryonic man, and as he was about an average adult male biped now, he had most likely been very close to an average male infant. "I might have been more," he hinted darkly, "but for certain idiotic people," and then he laughed. For it was not in Mr. John Boler's nature to be openly unpleasant to any one. This was the secret of his success as an innkeeper.

"By the way, Johnnie," said old Mr. Winkle late the next afternoon, "I thought I heard some one sobbing in the room next to mine last night. This morning I concluded I was mistaken, but now I'm sure I heard it. Anybody sick in there? I tried the door that leads into my room but it was locked. It sounds like a woman's voice. It always did tear the very heart out of me to hear a woman cry—" He went on talking but Mr. John Boler heard no more. His heart gave a wild bound of delight. "It" had given him his revenge. He would let the young woman stay in the hotel free of charge as long as old Winkle was in the house if only she would weep and sob pretty steadily. "'Johnnie,' by gad," thought he, resenting this new indignity to his name. "By George, what luck!" And then he went about his duties with a new spring in his always elastic step. At the lunch hour the following day he glanced into the dining-room, and sure enough, there sat the occupant of 96, and her eyes were swollen and red. At almost any other time this would have disturbed John Boler, but now it was a deep delight to him.

"Had a spat with her lover, no doubt," speculated he, "and, by Jove! it came at a lucky time for me. I'd pay her lover to keep up the row for three weeks if I could get at him. 'Weak stomach,' 'Johnnie,' indeed!" And he went back to the office rubbing his hands in a satisfied way, thinking that old Winkle would be afraid to go to his room that night, and that his sleep would be broken by visions of a weeping woman next door, even if she did not keep him awake half the time sobbing because Ralph had called her a mean thing or a proud stuck-up flirt, and hinted darkly that she was in love with his rival.

Matters had gone on in this way for nearly a week and Mr. Winkle had fretted and fumed and asked for another room two or three times, but Mr. Boler told him that the house was full and that there wasn't another room fit to offer him anyhow. He said that he would change the young lady's room as soon as he could, but he expected her to leave every day. She went out a good deal and wrote a large number of letters, and he felt sure she was going to remain only a day or two longer. He apologized and explained and planned, and then he would chuckle to himself the moment "old Winkle's" back was turned to think how "It" had succeeded in getting him even with the old reprobate without the least overt act on his part.

But the eighth morning Mr. Winkle rebelled outright. He said that he would wring the girl's worthless neck if he could get at her, but he could not and would not bear her sobs any longer. The night before they had been worse than ever and he had not slept a wink all night long. At last Mr. Boler promised that he would transfer the girl to another room that very afternoon if she did not leave, and the old man softened at once and said if she could not afford to pay for any other room he would pay the difference and she need never know it.

John Boler was not mercenary, but this offer gave him keen delight. For "old Winkle" would have to buy his relief after all. He thought how willingly a certain infant of his memory would have paid for rest and quiet too when it was helpless clay in the hands of certain old imbeciles he knew of.

At 2 p.m. he told Front to go up to 96 and tell the young lady that he now had a better room for her that would cost her no more than the one she now occupied, and to change her and her belongings to 342 forthwith. In five minutes Front came back as white as a cloth and said that the young lady's door was unlocked, that there were a number of letters on the table and that she was dead.

Mr. John Boler dashed from behind the desk across the street and was back in an incredibly short space of time, dragging behind him the dignified and wealthy physician whose office faced the hotel.

At this stage of the proceedings he cautioned the employees not to say a word about the matter on pain of instant dismissal. They one and all promised, and then proceeded to tell the first reporter who dropped in that a young lady had committed suicide upstairs and that she had cried out loud for a week. They gave a full description of her and her effects, all of which appeared in the 5 o'clock edition of the paper, duly headlined with her name and certain gratuitous speculations in regard to her motive for self-destruction. In these it was darkly hinted that she was no better than she should be, but now that she was dead "we" (the immaculate young gentlemen of the press) felt disposed to draw a veil of charity over her past and say with the law that her suicide proved her insanity, and that her mental condition might also account for her past frailties.

While these generous young gentlemen were penning their reports the doctor and Mr. John Boler worked over the poor helpless body of the unconscious girl in the dark little room upstairs. Between times they read the letters on the table and learned the old, old story—not of crime, but of misfortune. No work had offered, and she must work or starve—or sell the only value she possessed in the sight of men. One or two of the answers to her advertisement had boldly hinted at this, and when her little stock of money had run out and the little stock of misfortune had swelled into a mountain, and the little pile of insults had increased until she felt that she could endure life no longer, she had concluded to brave another world where she was taught to believe a loving Father awaited her because she had been good and true and pure to the last in spite of storms and disappointments and temptations. So she made the wild leap in the dark, confident that the hereafter could hold nothing worse, and believing sincerely that it must hold something better for Her and her kind, even if that better were only forgetfulness.

Up to this point her story was that of thousands of helpless girls who face the unknown dangers of a great city with the confidence of youth, and that ill training and ignorance of the world which is supposed to be a part of the charm of young womanhood. She had not registered her real name, it is true; but this was because she intended to advertise for work and have the replies sent to the hotel, and somehow she thought that it would be easier for her to do that over a name less sacred to her than her mother's, which was also her own. So instead of registering as Fannie Ellis Worth of Atlanta, she had written "Miss Kate Jarvis" and had given no address whatever. This latter fact told strongly against her with the reporters. They located her in a certain house on Thirty-first Street and "interviewed" the madam, who gave them a picture of a girl who had once been there, and a cut of this picture appeared in two of the morning papers with the fuller account of the suicide. A beautiful moral was appended to this history of the girl's life "which had now come to its appropriate ending." But when one of these enterprising young gentlemen of the press called to get the details of the funeral for his paper, he was shocked to learn that the young lady was not dead after all, and that she was now in a fair way to recover. He was still further disgusted when neither Mr. Boler nor the attending physician would submit to an interview and declined to allow him to send his card to the girl's room.

Then and there he made up his mind that if he had to rewrite that two-column report to fit the new developments in the case, he would, as he expressed it, make John Boler and pompous Dr. Ralston wish that they had never been bom. Incident to this undertaking, he would darkly hint at a number of things in regard to the girl herself and their relations with her. This was not at all to make her wish that she had never been born; but if it should serve that purpose, the young gentleman did not feel that he would be in the least to blame—if, indeed, he gave the matter a thought at all, which he very likely did not.

The article he wrote was certainly very "wide awake" and surprised even himself in its ingenuity of conjecture as to the motive which could prompt two such men as John Boler, proprietor of the Boler House, and Dr. Ralston, "whose reputation had heretofore been above suspicion, to place themselves in so unenviable, not to say dangerous, a position." He suggested that although the young woman had taken her case out of the jurisdiction of the coroner by not actually dying, this fact did not relieve the affair of certain features which demanded the prompt attention of the police court. The matter was perfectly clear. Here was a young woman who had attempted to relieve herself, by rapid means, of the life which all the social and financial conditions which surrounded her had combined to take by a slower and more painful process. If she had succeeded, the law held that she was of unsound mind—that she was, in short, a lunatic—and treated her case accordingly; but, on the other hand, if she failed, or if, as in this instance, her effort to place herself beyond want and pain was thwarted by others, then the law was equally sure that she was not a lunatic at all, but that she was a criminal, and that it was the plain duty of the police judge to see that she was put with those of her class—the enemies and outcasts of society.

It was also quite clear that any one who aided, abetted, or shielded a criminal was particeps criminis, and that unless Mr. John Boler and Dr. Ralston turned the young offender over to the police at once, there was a virtuous young reporter on the Daily Screamer who intended to know the reason why.

It was this article in the Screamer which first made Mr. Winkle aware of the condition of affairs in the room adjoining his own. He had been absent from the hotel for some hours, and had, therefore, known nothing of the sad happenings so near him. He dashed down into the office with the paper in his hand and asked for Mr. Boler; but that gentleman was not visible. It was said that he was in consultation with Dr. Ralston at the office of the latter, whereupon Mr. Winkle re-read the entire article aloud to the imperturbable clerk and expressed himself as under the impression that something was the matter with the law, or else that a certain reporter for the Screamer was the most dangerous lunatic at present outside of the legislature. The clerk smiled. A young man leaning against the desk made a note on a tablet, and then asked Mr. Winkle what he knew of the case and to state his objections to the law, first saying which law he so vigorously disapproved. The clerk winked at Mr. Winkle, but Mr. Winkle either did not see, or else did not regard the purport of the demonstration, and proceeded to express himself with a good deal of emphasis in regard to a condition of affairs which made it possible to elect as lawmakers men capable of framing such idiotic measures and employing on newspapers others who upheld the enactment. But before he had gone far in these strictures on public affairs as now administered he espied John Boler and followed him hastily upstairs.

That afternoon Mr. Winkle almost fell from his chair when he saw the evening edition of the Screamer with a three-column "interview" with himself. It was headed, "Rank Socialism at the Boler House. A Close Friend of the Offending Landlord Lets the Cat out of the Bag. A Dangerous Nest of Law Breakers. John Boler and Dr. Ralston still Defiant. Backed by a Man Who Ought to Know Better. Shameless Confession of one of the Arch Conspirators. The Mask torn from Old Silas Winkle Who Roomed Next to the Would-be Suicide. Will the Police Act Now?"

When Mr. Winkle read the article appended to these startling headlines, he descended hastily to the office floor and proceeded to make some remarks which it would be safe to assert would not be repeated by any Sunday-school superintendent—in the presence of his class—in the confines of the State of New York. John Boler was present at the time and whispered aside to Mr. Winkle that a reporter for the Screamer and five others from as many different papers were within hearing, whereupon Mr. Winkle became more and more excited, and talked with great volubility to each and every one of the young men as they gathered about him. "Adds Blasphemy to His Other Crimes," wrote one of them as his headline, and then John Boler interfered.

"Look here, boys," said he pleasantly, but with a ring of determination in his voice, "you just let Mr. Winkle alone. This sort of thing is all new to him, and he had no more to do with that girl than if his room had been in Texas." (The reporters winked at each other and one of them wrote, Connived at by the Proprietor.) "I put her in the room next to his. I helped the doctor to resuscitate her. I positively refuse to give you her real name and present address, although I know both, and Mr. Winkle does not, and if the police court has any use for me it knows where to find me. Have a cigar?" Each reporter took a weed, and three of them went to the office of Dr. Ralston to complete their records as soon as possible.

"I'm sorry all this has happened to you in my house, Mr. Winkle," said John Boler, as they stood alone for a moment. "It is partly my fault, too," he added, in a sudden burst of contrition. "It" had carried his revenge further than he had intended. He knew how the old man's sudden outbreak of righteous indignation would go against him in the newspaper reports that would follow, and John Boler was kind-hearted as well as fearless.

"Good Lord, don't you worry about me, Johnnie!" said the old man, craning his neck to watch the retreating forms from the window. "But those young devils have gone over to the doctor's office and they'll bully him into telling where the girl is, and then they'll bully the police into dragging her into court yet. Dear me, dear me!"

"Now, don't you be scared about that, Mr. Winkle. The doctor and I have made up our minds to fight this thing out. We've found out all about the girl and that it was simply a case of utter despair. It was a question of death by slow or by quick means. Society, law, prescribed the slow method, and the girl herself chose the rapid one. Well, now, as long as she was to be the sufferer in either case, it strikes me that she had about as good a right to a voice in the matter as the rest of us. Dr. Ralston and I checkmated her. (I can't afford to have that kind of thing happen in the hotel, of course.) But, by gad, we're not going to let them make a criminal of her. All the circumstances combined to do that before and she chose death. Well, we stopped her efforts in that line too, and now the court proposes to put the finishing touches on society's other inhumanities and send her up for it. Why, good God, man, just look at it! In substance that girl said, 'I'll die before I'll be forced into association with criminals,' and the court says, 'You shall do nothing of the kind. Science shall doctor you up and we will send you up. Despair is a crime.' That girl tried every way she knew of to live right. She failed. No work that she could do came her way. Well, now, will you just tell me what she was to do? You know what any man on God's earth would do if he had been situated that way and could have sold his virtue—in the sense we use virtue for women. Well, some women are not built that way. They prefer to die. Life don't mean enough of happiness to them to pay for the rest of it—life as it is, I mean. Well, since women don't have anything to say about what the laws and social conditions shall be, it strikes me that the situation is a trifle arbitrary, to put it mildly. We make laws for and demands upon women that no man on earth would think of complying with, and then we tell 'em they sha'n't even die to get away from the conditions we impose and about which they are not allowed a word to say. To tell you the bald truth I'm ashamed of it. So when we learned that girl's story we just made up our minds that since we had taken the liberty to keep her from getting out of the world by a shorter cut than the one usually prescribed in such cases—starvation—that we'd just take the additional liberty of keeping her from being hounded to insanity and made a criminal of by legal verdict."

Mr. Winkle gave a snort that startled John Boler, for he had been running on half to himself during the last of his talk and had almost forgotten that the old man was present. When he heard the explosion he mistook its meaning and his conscience gave him another smart twinge.

"Yes, I'm sorry, very sorry, Mr. Winkle, that this trouble has come to you in my house, but who could have foreseen that—a—that is to say—"

"Trouble to me?" exclaimed Mr. Winkle. "Trouble to me? Who's said anything about any trouble to me? Do you suppose I care what those young scamps say about me in the papers? Got to make a living, haven't they? Well, society doesn't object to their making a living by taking what does not belong to 'em, if it happens to be a man's reputation or a woman's chance to ever make an honest living again. Little thefts like that don't count That is not a crime; but dear me, Johnnie, do you suppose I care a tinker's dam about that, so for as I go? God bless my soul, if the dear boys can sell their three columns of rot about me, and it will keep them off the heels of some poor devil that it might ruin, why, I'm satisfied. All I've got to say to you is, if they arrest you I'll go bail, and if they fine you I'll pay it, and if they jail you—hang it, Johnnie, I'll serve your term, that's all."

Mr. Boler laughed. "My punishment shall all be vicarious then, hey? Good idea, only it won't work in every-day life. The law doesn't let other people serve out your term. But I'm just as much obliged, and—and—to tell you the truth, Mr. Winkle, I'm—that is to say, I hope you will forgive me—the fact is, I forgive you freely for the part you took in helping to addle such brains as I had when I was a child. There is my hand. 'It' went a little too far this time, and—"

Mr. Winkle took off his glasses and polished them carefully. Then he placed them astride his nose and gazed thoughtfully at his old friend's son for fully a minute before he said a word. Finally he took the extended hand, shook it solemnly, and walked slowly away, wondering to himself if it could be possible that hard-headed old John Boler's son was touched a little in the brain. Mr. Boler noticed his perplexed expression and laughed merrily to himself as he started toward the elevator. Before he reached it he turned and beckoned to Mr. Winkle to follow him. On the third floor they were joined by Dr. Ralston.

"She is so much better now, Mr. Winkle," explained the genial hotel man, "and you are an older man than either the doctor or I, so I thought— It just struck me that she might feel— That you might like— Oh, damn it, would you like to go up to see her? We are going now. A clergyman has called, and if she wants to see him we shall not stay but a minute; but as there is no woman about, as she is so alone, I thought perhaps she might like to have an older man come with us, for she seems to be a very sensitive girl. She has been silent about herself so far; but she is better now, and we want to find out what work she can do, and have a place ready for her when she is able to get about. Perhaps she will talk more freely to you."

The old gentleman looked perplexed, but made no reply until they were out of the elevator. Then he took Mr. Boler by the arm and said helplessly, "I—I am a bachelor, you know, Johnnie, and—"

"No!" laughed Mr. Boler. "Well, confound it, you don't look it. Anybody would take you for the proud father of a large brood. She will think you are and it may help her. Come on."

The old gentleman entered the darkened room last and sat down silently in the deepest shadow. The doctor stepped to the bed and spoke in a low tone. A white face on the pillow turned slowly, so that the only band of light that reached in from the open door fell full upon it. Mr. Winkle shuddered as he saw for the first time the delicate, pallid, hopeless face.

"A priest?" she said feebly, in answer to the doctor. "Oh, no. Why should I want to see a priest? You've had your way. You've brought me back to battle with a world wherein I only now acknowledged my defeat." Her voice trembled with weakness and emotion, but she was looking steadily at the doctor with great wide eyes, in which there burnt the intensity of mental suffering and a determination to free her mind even at the risk of losing the good-will of those who had intended to be kind to her. "A priest! What could he do? This life is what I fear. His mission is to deal with other worlds—of which I know already what he does—and that is nothing. Of this life I know, alas! too much. Far more than he. He cannot help me, for I could tell him much he cannot know, of suffering and fortitude and hope laid low at last, without a refuge even in cloistered walls. I know what he would say. His voice would tremble and he would offer sympathy and good advice—and, maybe, alms. These are not what I want or need. I am not very old—just twenty-two—but I have thought and thought until my brain is tired, and what good could it do for him to sit beside me here and say in gentle tones that it is very sad? No doubt that he would tell me, too, how wicked I have been that I should choose to die by my own hand when life had failed me."

She smiled a little, and her wan face lit from within was beautiful still in spite of its pallor. The doctor murmured something about natural sympathy, and Mr. Boler remarked that men who were fortunate would gladly help those who were in distress if only they knew in time. She did not appear to heed them, but presently went on as though her mind were on the clergymen below waiting to see her.

"To feel that it is sad is only human; but what is to be done? That is the question now. What is to be done for suffering in this world? It is life that is hard to bear, not death. Sympathy with the unfortunate is good. Kind words and gentle tones as your priest recounts their woes are touching. Yes, and when they are drawn to fit the truth would melt a heart of stone; but unless action wings the sympathy and dries the tears, the object of his tenderness is in no wise bettered—indeed, is injured. Why? Because he lulls to sleep man's conscience and thereby gives relief from pangs that otherwise had found an outlet through an open purse. And when I say an open purse I do not speak of charity, that double blight which kills the self-respect in its recipient and numbs the conscience of the 'benevolent' man who grasps the utmost penny here that he may give with ostentation there, wounding the many that he may heal the few. All this was safe enough, no doubt, while Poverty was ignorant, for ignorance is helpless always; but now—" There was a pause. She raised her head a little from the pillow and a frightened look crept into her eyes—"but now the poor are not so ignorant that it will long be safe to play at cross purposes with suffering made too intelligent to drink in patient faith the bitter draughts of life and wait the crown of gold he promises hereafter—and wears, meanwhile, himself. A little joy on earth, they think, will not bedim the lustre of a life that is to come—if such there be. You see I've thought a little in these wretched days and months just past." She was silent again for a moment. A bitter smile crossed her face and vanished. The doctor offered her a powder which she swallowed without a word. John Boler stepped to the table and poured out a glass of wine, but when he held it toward her she shook her head and closed her eyes a moment. Then she spoke again as if no break had checked her thought. "Oh, no; I do not care to see your priest. The poor no longer fail to note his willingness to risk the needle's eye with camel's back piled high with worldly gain. If he may enter thus, why may not they with simpler train and fewer trappings? The poor are asking this to-day of prince and priest alike. No answer comes from either. Evasion does not satisfy. I ask, but no one answers. The day once was when silence passed for wisdom. That day is gone. To-day we are asking why? and why? and why? no longer, when? And so the old reply, 'hereafter,' does not fit the query. Why, not when, is what we urge to-day, and your replies must change to fit the newer, nearer question. When I say your replies, I do not mean you, doctor, nor your friend. You two meant kindly by me. Yes, I know. I am not claiming that you are at fault, nor they—the fortunate—the prince and priest. I understand. Blind nature took her course and trod beneath her cruel feet the millions who were born too weak to struggle with the foes they found within themselves and in their stronger brothers. I know, I know."

She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes wearily. Mr. Winkle drew near and stood behind the doctor's chair, still keeping in the shadow, but watching her pale face with an intensity born of a simple nature easy to stir and quick to resolve. The doctor touched her pulse with a light finger and gravely nodded his head as he glanced at his watch. Her heavy eyelids did not lift but her voice broke the silence again. There was a cadence in it that gave a solemn thrill to the three men as they listened, the doctor watching with professional interest the effect of the powder he had given; the other two waited, expecting they knew not what.

"The ignorance and cruelty of all the past, the superstitious fears, the cunning prophecies, the greeds and needs of men, joined hands and marched triumphant. They did not halt to ask the fallen what had borne them down. They did not silence bugle blasts of joy where new-made graves were thick. No silken flag was lowered to warm to life the shivering forms of comrades overcome and fallen by the way. The strong marched on and called themselves the brave. Sometimes they were. But other times the bravest had gone down, plucked at, perchance, by wife or child or friend whose sorrow or distress reached out and twined itself about the strong but tender heart and held it back until the foot lost step, and in the end the eye lost sight of those who only now had kept him company."

She lifted her small white hand and pointed as if to a distant battlefield, but her eyes remained closed. The doctor glanced uneasily at his watch and took her other wrist in his fingers again.

"The next battalion trampled him. The priest bent low and whispered 'over there, hereafter,' and slipped the treasure of the fallen hero beneath his ample robe to swell the coffers of the church, since dead men need no treasures."

Her voice was infinitely sad but she laughed a little and opened her eyes. They fixed themselves upon the silvered head of Mr. Winkle standing behind the doctor's chair.

"Perhaps I shock you. I do not mean to, but I have thought and thought these last few wretched months, and looking at the battlefields of life backward through all the ages, I thought I saw at night, in camp, the priest and conqueror meet beside the campfire and council for the next day's march. I thought I heard the monarch say, 'I go before and cleave my way. You follow me and gather up two things—the spoils I miss and all the arrows of awakened scorn and wrath embedded in the breasts of those of our own ranks who fall or are borne down, lest they arise and overtake us while we sleep and venge themselves on us. Tell them to wait. Their time will come. Tell them I clear the way for them, and you forgive a hatred which you see is growing up within their wicked breasts. Quiet, soothe, and shame them into peace. Assure them that hereafter they, not we, shall have the better part. Gain time. Lay blame to me if need be; but always counsel patience, waiting, acquiescence, peace, submission to the will of God—your will and mine. Your task is easy. No danger lies therein. I take the risk and share with you the glory and the gain.' I heard the priest disclaim all greed of gain and go to do his part as loyal subject and as holy man. I saw all this and more before I took the last resolve you balked. You meant it kindly, doctor, yes, I know, but I am very tired and what is there ahead for me, or such as I, on battlefields like these?"

No one ventured a reply. She closed her eyes and waited. The doctor took another powder from his case and held it above her lips. She smiled and swallowed it.

"We take our powders very docilely," she said, with a bitter little laugh as the wine-glass left her hand and Mr. Boler's finger touched her own. He noticed that hers was very cold.

"They used to make us sleep in the good old days of priest and monarch, but our nerves are wrong just now. Our powders only make us think the more and have strange visions."

Dr. Ralston glanced at Mr. Boler and nodded his head mysteriously. The powder was beginning to work, he thought, for she had reverted to the old vision, and talked as if she were in a dream. "That way it was, another way it is, and still another will be," she was saying. "To-day the honest poor, the hampered weak, are defeated, dazed, and some of us are hopeless. Others there are who cling to hope and life and brood on vengeance. That is your danger, gentlemen, for days that are to come. You will have to change your powders. The old prescriptions do not make us sleep. We think, and think, and think. We strain our nerves and break our hearts, for what? A life as cold and colorless and sad as death itself—to some of us far sadder—and yet you will not even let us die. Again we ask you, why? There is no place on earth for such as we, unless we will be criminals. That is the hinge whereon the future turns. How many will prefer the crime to want? What dangers lie behind the door that now is swinging open? Intelligence has taught us scorn for such a grovelling lot, has multiplied our needs, and turned the knife of suffering in quivering wounds no longer deadened by the anaesthetics of ignorant content with life or superstitious fear of death. The door is swinging on the hinge. The future has to face creatures the past has made like demons. Some, like myself, behind the door, who do not love mere life, will turn the sharpened dagger on themselves. But there are others—"

Her voice sank. The three men thought that she had fallen asleep at last. The doctor drew a long satisfied breath and consulted his watch for the fourth time, making a mental note for future use in giving the drug whose action he was watching. He started and frowned, therefore, when her voice broke the silence again.

"Others there are, in spite of pain and anguish, in spite of woe and fear, who cling to life—who read in eyes they worship the pangs of hunger, cold, and mental agony. Where will their vengeance go? Who knows?"

She opened her great eyes and looked first at one and then at another, and repeated, "Who knows?"

Again there was no reply. After a long pause Mr. Winkle said gently:

"There is a place in life for girls like you. I shall charge myself with it. You shall find work and joy yet, my child. Now go to sleep. Be quiet. We have let you talk too long. Stop thinking sadly now. You think too much. You think too much."

She closed her eyes quickly and there was a tightening of the lips that left them paler than before. Then a tear rolled slowly down her temple. Before it reached the pillow the doctor bent forward and dried it softly with his silk handkerchief. She opened her eyes wide at the touch. "'Be quiet?'" she repeated, "'stop thinking?' Oh, yes; I will be quiet, but the rest, the others? Those with whom you do not charge yourself, who find no work, no joy? Will they be quiet, will they stop thinking? Oh, yes; I can be quiet, very quiet, but the rest, the rest? The others who think too much—all, all?"

There was a wild look in her dry eyes. The doctor touched her wrist again and said softly to the men beside him, "It is working now. She will sleep. But the shock of all her trouble has left her mind unhinged, poor child. 'The rest? the others?' We cannot care for all the countless poor. Her brain is surely touched, poor child, poor child. How can we tell whether the others will stop thinking, or how, or when? Her mind was wandering, and now she sleeps, poor child. Come out. She is best alone."

They closed the door gently behind them and stood a moment in awkward silence outside, each one afraid to speak and yet ashamed of his own tender helplessness. At last Mr. Winkle looking steadily in the crown of his hat, said huskily, "By gad, boys, there is something rotten in the state of Denmark." They all three laughed with an effort, but kept their eyes averted.

"It is a rat in the wainscoting of the storeroom," said John Boler, with a desperate attempt to regain his old manner and tone, "and I've got to go and look after it or there'll be the devil to pay with the Boler House." And he ran down the stairs three steps at a time heartily ashamed of his own remark, but determined not to allow the tears to show themselves either in his eyes or voice, and feeling that his only safety was in flight.

But Mr. Winkle had not stood silently behind the doctor's chair all that time for nothing, and if his nature was somewhat light, and if he had taken life so far as something of a jest, he was by no means without a heart. He did not now trouble himself very greatly about the tangled problems of existence, but he felt quite equal to dealing with any given case effectively and on short notice. With systems he was helpless, with individuals he could deal promptly. Therefore he, in common with the doctor and Mr. Boler, and, indeed, with most of us, occupied himself with the girl he saw suffering and in need.

When she had cried out, "But the rest, the others, what of them?" he had said nothing, because he had nothing to say. He was vaguely aware that when the smallpox broke out on one of Dr. Ralston's patients that astute practitioner did not essay to treat each individual pustule separately as the whole of the disease and so devote his entire skill and mind to each in turn until it was cured. But then he could not undertake to cure the whole human race of its various social ailments any more than Dr. Ralston could hope to look after all of its physical pains. So Mr. Winkle took this one little social pustule upstairs as his particular charge, and in his own peculiar way went about securing better conditions for her, leaving the "others who think too much" to somebody else, or to fate, as the case might be. Therefore, when Mr. Winkle reached the street door and met an officer of the law who had come prepared to learn the whereabouts of the would-be suicide or else take Mr. John Boler and Dr. Ralston into custody, the old gentleman made up his mind to begin his part in the future proceedings without further delay.

Unknown to Mr. Winkle himself, literature had lost a great novelist when he had gone into the mercantile business, and the surprises which he now sprang upon the policeman were no less astonishing and interesting to himself than they were to that astute guardian of the public morals.

"Want to know where she is, do you? Well, don't worry Johnnie Boler any more. They've already got him so his mind is a little affected. I'll tell you all about that girl. Her name is Estelle Morris. She worked for me for nine years as a nursery governess. Last month my youngest child died, and it upset Estelle so that she has been out of her head ever since. I thought if I'd bring her to the city maybe she might get over it, but she didn't, and the doctor gave her some stuff and she took a double dose by mistake, and all the row came from that and the long tongues of the servants, pieced out by the long pencils of the reporters. See!"

"Is that so?" exclaimed the officer. "Where is she now?"

Mr. Winkle had not thought of that, and he did not know exactly what to say; but he agreed to produce her in court on the following day if so ordered, and there the matter dropped for the moment.

That evening there appeared in a paper this "want:" "A good-looking young woman who is willing to lie like a pirate for the space of one hour for the sum of $50. May have to go to court." The number of handsome girls who were anxious to lend the activity of their tongues for the purpose named and the amount stipulated was quite wonderful. One particularly bright young miss remarked that she had been in training for just that position for years. She was confidential correspondent for a broker. Mr. Winkle accepted her on the spot.

"Now," said he, "look solemn and sad. That is right. You do it first rate. Whatever I tell about you you are to stick to. Understand that?"

"Perfectly. Years of practice," she responded, with entire simplicity and without a suspicion of humor.

"Your name is Estelle Morris, and you have been the governess of my children for nine years. How old are you?"

"Nineteen," said Estelle Morris demurely.

"Good gracious, girl, what could you teach at ten years of age? You've got to be older. Take the curl out of your hair in front and put on a bonnet with strings. I heard my niece say that made her look ten years older. Mind you, you are not a day under twenty-six. Not a day."

"All right," said Estelle Morris thoughtfully.

"You are to look sick, too, and—"

"Oh, I can fix that easy enough. I'll—"

"Well, then fix it and come back here at exactly two o'clock this afternoon."

At the appointed hour, Mr. Winkle met Miss Estelle Morris and took her with great dignity and care to the Boler House, where he was joined by another gentleman—an officer of the law—and the three started out together.

"The examination was strictly private in deference to the wishes of the parties first implicated, John Boler and Dr. Ralston, and because it is now believed that the girl is more sinned against than sinning," wrote the reporter for the morning rival of the Screamer. "It is the object of justice to help the erring to start anew in life wherever that line of action is consonant with the stern necessities of the blind goddess. Neither of the male accomplices appeared in the case, but Mr. Silas Winkle—whose name has figured somewhat conspicuously in the matter—produced the principal, who, it must be confessed, is pretty enough to account for all the chivalry which has been displayed in her behalf. She confessed to twenty-six years of single wretchedness, although she could easily pass for a year or two younger. It would appear that she had lived in Mr. Winkle's family for nine years as governess to his children and came to the city with him about two weeks ago. The justice accepted this explanation of the relations existing between them, and that there was no attempt at suicide at all, but only an accidental overdose of a remedy prescribed by Dr. Ralston, which explained satisfactorily the doctor's connection with the unsavory case, and places him once more in the honorable position from which this unfortunate affair so nearly hurled him. In short, the justice said in substance, 'not guilty, and don't do it any more.' The young woman bowed modestly, and Silas Winkle led her from the court-room a sadder, and, let us hope, a wiser woman. Such as she must have much to live for. Many a man has braved death for a face less lovely than hers. This ends the 'Boler House Mystery,' which, after all, turns out to be only a tempest in a teapot, with a respectable father of a family and his children's governess for dramatis persono and a fresh young reporter on a certain sensational morning contemporary as general misinformer of the public as usual." This was headlined, "Exploded—Another Fake by Our Esteemed Contemporary."

That night John Boler rubbed his eyes when he read the report. "I thought you were a bachelor, Mr. Winkle," said he, "and here you produce in court a governess—"

"I am," said Mr. Winkle, laughing, and then he showed his "want" advertisement. "That is the whole case, Johnnie, my boy, but it is all over now. Don't you worry; it might go to your head again. You saved the girl and I saved you, and it only cost me $50. I'd pay that any time to get ahead of the Screamer, and I rather think I salted that enterprising sheet down this time, don't you? But what is to become of that girl?" added he, without waiting for a reply to his first question. "You've taken the liberty to save her life, which she had decided she did not want under existing circumstances. Has she simply got to go over the same thing again? I told her that I'd look after her, but I don't see how in thunder I'm going to do it. She won't take money from me and I've got nothing for her to do. Is there nothing ahead of her but a coffin or a police court?"

"For this individual girl, yes. Dr. Ralston has already secured work for her; but for all the thou-sands of her kind—" John Boler's voice trembled a little and he stopped speaking to hide it. He in common with most men was heartily ashamed of his better nature.

"For all the thousands of her kind," broke in Mr. Winkle, "there are just exactly three roads open—starvation, suicide, or shame, with the courts, the legislature, and the newspapers on the side of the latter. I just tell you, Johnnie, it makes my blood boil. I—I don't see any way out of it—none at all. That is the worst of it."

"I do," said Mr. Boler.

"You do!" exclaimed Mr. Winkle excitedly, and then looked hard at his old friend's son to see if he had gone crazy again.

"Yes, I do. Those same newspapers you are so down on will do it. They're bound to. The boys go wrong sometimes, as they did in this case; but that only makes sensible people indignant, and, after all, it called attention to the law that makes such things possible. More light on the laws. That's the first thing we want, and no matter which side of a question the papers take, we are bound to get that in the long run. Silence is the worst danger. We get pretty mad at the boys if they write what we don't like, but that isn't half so dangerous as if they didn't write at all. See?"

Mr. Winkle turned slowly away and shook his head as he murmured to himself: "Who would have believed that old John Boler would have been the father of a lunatic? Dear me, dear me. I'm going back to Meadville before I get touched in the head myself." And he started to his room to pack his valise. John Boler followed him to the elevator.

"I don't blame you for feeling pretty mad about all the stuff they put in the Screamer about you; but—oh, the boys mean all right—"

"So does the devil," broke in the old man. But Mr. Boler gave no evidence of noticing the interruption nor of observing the irascibility of his guest.

"The trouble is with the system," he went on, entering the elevator after Mr. Winkle. "Why, just look at it, man. What I say or do, if it is of a public nature, I'm responsible for to the public. What you write you put your name to; but it's a pretty big temptation to a young fellow who knows he has got the swing in a newspaper and doesn't have to sign his name to what he says, to make an effort to 'scoop' his rivals at whatever cost. The boys don't mean any harm, but irresponsible power is a mighty dangerous weapon to handle. Not many older men can be trusted to use it wisely. Then why should we expect it of those young fellows who don't know yet any of the deeper meanings of life? Great Scott, man! I think they do pretty well under the circumstances. I'm afraid I'd do worse."

Mr. Winkle stroked his chin reflectively.

"No doubt, no doubt," he said abstractedly, as they stepped out of the elevator.

John Boler looked at him for a brief space of time to see if he had intended the thrust and then went on:

"That girl's life or death just meant an item to the boys, and it didn't mean much more to you or me until—until we stood and heard her talk and saw her suffer, and were made personally uncomfortable by it. Yet we are old enough to know all about it for her and others. We do know it, and go right along as if we didn't. We are a pretty bad lot, don't you think so?"

Silas Winkle unlocked his door before he spoke. Then he turned to his old friend's son and shook his hand warmly.

"Good-bye," he said, looking at him steadily. "Good-bye, Johnnie. I see it only comes on you at odd spells. Come up to Meadville for a while and I think you will get over it altogether. Your father was the clearest-headed man I ever saw and you seem to have lucid intervals. Those last remarks of yours were worthy of your father, my boy," and the old man patted him softly on the back.

John Boler whistled all the way downstairs. Then he laughed.

"I wonder if old Winkle really does think I am off my base," said he, as he took down his hat. "I suppose we are all more or less crazy. He thinks I am and I know he is. It is a crazy world. Only lunatics could plan or conduct it on its present lines." And he laughed again and then sighed and passed out into the human stream on Broadway.