Part of Matt Hilary's protest against the status in which he found himself a swell was to wash his face for dinner in a tin basin on the back porch, like the farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had the hands eat with him; when his mother and sister were visiting him he pretended that the table was too small for them all at dinner and tea, though he continued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies were never up at his hour; the hands knew well enough what it meant, but they liked Matt.

Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his emblematic ablutions. "Oh, is it so near dinner?" she asked.

"Yes. Where is Maxwell?"

"I left him up at the camp." She walked a little way out into the ground-ivy that matted the back-yard under the scattering spruce trees.

Matt followed, and watched the homing and departing bees around the hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near the wall.

"Those fellows will be swarming before long," he said, with a measure of the good comradeship he felt for all living things.

"I don't see," said Louise, plucking a tender, green shoot from one of the fir boughs overhead, "why Mr. Maxwell is so hard."

"Is he hard?" asked Matt. "Well, perhaps he is."

"He is very sneering and bitter," said the girl. "I don't like it."

"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself."

"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that."

"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt, smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young; he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now."

"He's older than I am!" said Louise.

"He hasn't seen so much of the world."

"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice as we supposed. I should call him dangerous."

"Oh, I shouldn't say that, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner."

"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn.

Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've the time."

"Well, after dinner," said Matt.

Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper.

"I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell. The Events is going to send me to do the Social Science Congress which meets in Quebec this year, and I'm going to take Mrs. Pinney along and have a good time. She's got so she can travel first-rate, now; and the change will do her and the baby both good. I shall interview the social science wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the thing that I'm onto is Northwick. I've always felt that Northwick kind of belonged to yours truly, anyway; I was the only man that worked him up in any sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, and I've got a little idea that I think will simply clean out all competition. That letter of his set me to thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and I both happened on the idea at the same time; clear case of telepathy. Our idea is that Northwick didn't go to Europe—of course he didn't!—but he's just holding out for terms with the company. I don't believe he's got off with much money; but if he was going into business with it in Canada, he would have laid low till he'd made his investments. So my theory is that he's got all the money he took with him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel, and she's a team; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at Quebec, while I'm roaming round in Rimouski and the wilderness generally, and I shall need active help.

"Now, I liked some things in that Abstract article of yours; it was snappy and literary, and all that, and it showed grasp of the subject. It showed a humane and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that could be made to tell in my little game if I could get the use of it. So I've concluded to let you in on the ground floor, if you want to go into the enterprise with me; if you don't, don't give it away; that's all. My idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two than by one; but we have not only got to get at him, but we have got to get him; and get him on this side of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral suasion mostly, and that's where your massive and penetrating intellect will be right on deck. You won't have to play a part, either; if you believe that his only chance of happiness on earth is to come home and spend the rest of his life in State's prison, you can conscientiously work him from that point of view. Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a great chance. If there's any of that money he speaks of we shall have our pickings: and then as a mere scoop, if we get at Northwick at all, whether we can coax him over the line or not, we will knock out the fellow that fired the Ephesian dome so that he'll never come to time in all eternity.

"I mean business, Maxwell; I haven't mentioned this to anybody but my wife, yet; and if you don't go in with me, nobody shall. I want you, old boy, and I'm willing to pay for you. If this thing goes through, I shall be in a position to name my own place and price on the Events. I expect to be managing editor before the year's out, and then I shall secure the best talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E. Maxwell, and don't you forget it.

"Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There's no hurry. Take time. We've got to wait till the Soc. Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we've got to let the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and reward virtue."