GIBBS settled Stephen's affairs, and there was left in his hands a small sum of money, which, by dint of borrowing, he increased to a figure that enabled him to take the boy to Benson. The occasion was like a tonic to him, the buoyancy of a dauntless spirit spoke in his very air and manner; he forgot Grant City, the Golden West Saloon, his shabbiness; and his travelling companions learned early who he was, and to most ears, General Gibbs of Kansas, had a large sound. He reached Benson just at nightfall. The place had an unfamiliar aspect. A village had become a town, the town almost a city. He had expected changes, but he would have said that he could have found his way to what he had known years before as the Leonard farm in spite of any changes; yet again and again he was forced to pause and ask his way. Even when he reached the house itself he would not have known it. He paused at the gate and glanced about. Below him was the level valley of the Little Wolf River. It was dotted with rows of lights; they diverged or ran in parallel lines and marked streets, streets in what in his day had been the best corn-land in all the county.

Gibbs entered the yard and followed up the path to the front door. Virginia, herself, answered his summons, and seeing her there in the door, in the light that streamed out and about her, he owned that the years had been kind to her.

What Virginia saw, was a red-faced man who smelt strongly of whisky and stale tobacco; a man with his hat off, which exposed a shiny bald head, and a thin fringe of grey hair, bleary eyes, and bulbulous nose; but who in spite of his dissipated look and his shabbiness, the shabbiness of well-worn clothes and soiled linen that had been slept and travelled in, still maintained a jaunty and a gallant air even. She saw further that he was holding by the hand a small boy, a very small boy indeed, who looked absurdly little for short trousers and roundabouts, and as if he had been suddenly advanced from skirts and had not yet grown accustomed to the change.

“Mrs. Landray,” Gibbs spoke in a husky throaty voice, “I see you don't recall me; but it ain't to be wondered at. Gibbs is my name, General Gibbs of Kansas;” he threw out his chest. “I am delighted to see you again after all these years; it's an honour, a pleasure,” he placed his hand on his heart, and bowed low with old-fashioned courtesy. The sight of her had taken him back full twenty years. “An honour, a pleasure,” he repeated.

The look of surprise on Virginia's face vanished. She understood. It was Gibbs and Stephen's baby—this other Stephen Mason Landray whom she had never seen, but who stood there in the light, blinking at her sleepily with Landray eyes; the small upturned face had the Landray features. Stooping quickly she raised the child in her arms. The general followed her into the house.

“I had written you, general, for in your letter to me you made no mention of the child,” she said, and now she gave him her hand.

“My oversight, my neglect,” said Gibbs blandly. “Fact is, I wasn't thinking much about him just then—it was poor Steve.” His voice broke, and she saw his eyes glisten and fill.

“But he had you to the last,” she said gently, gratefully. “You were with him during all his sickness.”

“I did what I could for him, and so did my Julia. Everybody loved him, he was a real Landray in that.”

Virginia had motioned him to a chair; then she seated herself with the child still in her arms.

“I feel better now he is with you,” said Gibbs beaming on them benevolently.

“He's very like—very like his father, don't you think?” said Virginia, her face pressed against the child's soft cheek.

“I reckon he's good and tired.” Gibbs rose from his chair. “I'll come in the morning to see how he gets on.”

“But won't you stay? I'm alone just now; Mrs. Walsh who makes her home with me, it at her daughter's, Mrs. Norton's; but I'm expecting her back any minute.”

“I want to find Jake Benson,” said Gibbs. “I reckon I'll pass the night with him. Good-night, son;” he gave the boy his fat forefinger. Then from his pocket he took the letter which Stephen had written Virginia, so largely at his instigation. “It's from Steve,” he said simply, as he handed it to her.

“I've said nothing of my gratitude to you for all your kindness;” and Virginia drew the child closer to her breast.

“It was little enough I was able to do, Mrs. Landray. God knows I wanted Steve to live, but it wasn't to be.” He mopped his face with his handkerchief. “It wasn't to be,” he repeated sadly, then he bade her an abrupt good-night and hurried from the house.

As the general had intimated, he proposed being entertained by Benson. The trip East had involved such nice calculation that this would be necessary unless he expected to practice extraordinary selfdenial on the way home; and freed of the care of the child he proposed permitting himself a certain latitude on the return journey.

The lawyer no longer lived in the house on the square; he had moved to a more remote part of the town where he had built a home which stood in the midst of extensive grounds. It was altogether the most costly and imposing place in Benson.

Gibbs found his way thither. From the servant who answered his ring, he learned that his friend was not in, but was expected home shortly.

“Then I'll wait for him here,” said Gibbs.

This the servant seemed reluctant to allow, but Gibbs pushed resolutely past him.

“Tell Jake—” he corrected himself artfully. “Tell Mr. Benson that it's General Gibbs of Kansas;” and he was shown into the library; he had hardly seated himself when the street door opened again, and a moment later Benson hurried into the room.

“Why, Gibbs, what has brought you back?” he cried.

The general took him warmly by the hand.

“Jake, how are you!” he said. “I've fetched Stephen's boy home to Mrs. Landray,” he added, answering Benson's question.

“That was very sad about Landray,” observed the lawyer gravely.

“I don't know when I felt a death as I felt his,” rejoined Gibbs huskily, and his under lip quivered.

There was a brief silence in which the lawyer gave himself up to a critical scrutiny of his guest.

“What are you doing, Gibbs?” he asked abruptly.

“I? Oh, I'm trying to rub the creases out of a cocked hat,” answered the general lightly. “I am sort of resting on my laurels, Jake, waiting for the tide to turn.”

“It's good to have laurels to rest on,” said Benson. “Come into the dining-room and we will have something to eat and drink.”

Gibbs quitted his chair with alacrity.

“You were speaking of Landray a moment ago,” said Benson when they had seated themselves. “He was not very successful, was he?”

“At first he was, he made a good deal of money; and I reckon if he'd lived he'd soon been on his feet again; but we struck a wave of temporary depression; you know how those things go,” said Gibbs stoutly. He was not blind, but it was not in his nature to admit an unqualified defeat; beside Benson was the last man to whom he would have told the truth where it touched Landray's pathetic struggle.

“Too bad!” and again Benson's shrewd glance comprehended his guest. His lips curled cynically; in that moment he was quite without pity for Gibbs, who looked the shabby adventurer all too plainly; whose flame-coloured face and shaking uncertain hands told their own story. How could Landray have been deceived by Gibbs! He felt only intolerance and contempt for what he conceived to have been Stephen's utter lack of judgment. It was his determined wrongheadedness that had wrecked his life; no one could have saved him.

“It's not necessary for me to ask if Landray left anything. I suppose his little son is quite unprovided for?”

In spite of himself, something of his feeling had crept into the lawyer's tone. This was not lost on Gibbs, and resentment showed in his battered face, but he contented himself with merely saying:

“If he'd lived he'd won out, but he died at the wrong moment. No, he didn't leave anything.”

“Humph!” said the lawyer, and fell silent.

The general poured himself a drink of whisky, emptied his glass, and poured himself another; the immediate effect of this was that he was somewhat mollified. He looked about him with undisguised approval in his eyes.

“You have housed yourself rather handsomely, Jake; I wonder what the old man would say if he could come back and see how the money he made out of pelts and whisky had been spent; appearances never bothered him,” he said, disrespectfully. “And you have changed, Jake; you've sort of taken on additions, too. I'd never have thought you had a taste for luxury; but here I find you living like a prince.”

“How have I changed?” asked Benson curiously.

“Well, I should say you were less frank for one thing, Jake; and you have accumulated dignity along with your dollars; but it's a combination that's hard to beat; I wonder you ain't ever married.”

There was another silence, in which Gibbs applied himself to his glass.

In a quiet easy going way, without haste and with an economy of effort that seemed to argue entire indifference to worldly success, Benson had yet thriven exceedingly in his various enterprises. He stood at the head of his profession; men much older than himself, and of much wider actual experience, yielded him precedence. Hardly any venture was embarked upon in the town but his advice or help was asked; for it was known that he could always command money. In part this had fallen to his character and ability, in part it was because of the thousands Southerland had paid him for that wild land in Belmont County. It was because of the good use he had made of those thousands, that people were now able to speak of him as a millionaire. His riches seemed to have detached him from those traditional intimacies that belong to life in a small town; only a very few of the older men in the place ventured to call him Jake; this while it amused him, yet had a certain subtle influence on his character. He was fundamentally much too frank and simple for any external show; but he was also too sensible to despise the solid advantages that flowed to him from this attitude of his townsmen, and in a way he was remotely flattered by it. It was only Virginia whose manner conceded nothing, and who paid no deference to his worldly success and growing position as the great man of the town. It was nothing to her that he was adding house to house and farm to farm; these things did not impress her; and he saw that to her at least, his position had remained exactly what it had been in her husband's lifetime. If anything, her manner toward him had grown more formal, more as if she were defining his place for him, since he was in danger of forgetting it.

There were times, days of depression and suffering, when his loathing of himself was the more bitter because of the very respect men so readily gave him. What if they could know, what if he were suddenly and relentlessly held up for the scorn and contempt he merited, his hypocrisy made known! The hypocrisy of his charities, the hypocrisy of every decent untterance that fell from his lips, placed side by side with the black record of his hidden act. Gibbs had spoken of a change; and the change was there deeper than he knew; a rotten spot in his conscience that was spreading—spreading.

A moment before and he had hardly been able to hide his contempt for Gibbs; now he was ready to abase himself before him; for at his worst, Gibbs was a blatant easy-going scamp with a kindly generous streak in him that had probably held him back from much rascality.

“I expect you were a good friend to Landray, Gibbs; and doubtless helped him through the worst of his troubles,” he was moved to say.

“Who told you that, Jake?” asked the general quickly.

“I don't have to be told it, I know you,” said Benson.

“I don't deserve any praise; we were poor together at the last, and as long as you ain't got anything you can afford to be generous.” He took from his pocket a letter and handed it to Benson.

The envelope was unsealed and there was no superscription. Benson drew forth the letter it contained and read it. Gibbs watched him narrowly the while. But the lawyer's face was expressionless, and told nothing of what was passing in his mind. Having read the letter, Benson returned it to its envelope, then he caught Gibbs's eye. It held a question.

“You know what Landray has written here?” he said.

“Yes, Steve had me read it and the other letter he mentions, which I gave Mrs. Landray.”

“What was in the letter you gave her?” asked Benson.

“He wanted her to have the boy, if you would do nothing for him. You see he was sure of her, Jake.”

“Yes, he could be sure of her; one can always be sure of her,” said Benson enigmatically.

Gibbs shot him a quick glance.

“I reckon so,” he said quietly.

“But not of me,” and Benson laughed a little bitterly.

“Well, I gathered, not so much from what he said as from what he didn't say, that you and he weren't friends;” and with a stubby forefinger Gibbs made a pattern on the polished table with some whisky and water he had inadvertently spilled from his glass. “I find it's a good thing to let death square all grudges,” he ventured. “I think at heart he counted on you, Jake, because of Marian.”

“I don't consider that any one has any claim of that sort on me,” said Benson sharply. “Few men stand more alone than I do; and when Marian died it was about the last of the connection—except your wife, Gibbs.”

“And the boy,” interjected Gibbs hastily. “You're forgetting him, Jake.”

“And the boy,” repeated Benson. “But his is a rather remote claim; and I all but ruined myself on account of Marian's father, I suppose Landray told you that.”

Gibbs nodded slightly. The lawyer went on.

“Julia is nearer, but you don't seem to be looking to me because of that, Gibbs.”

The general's red face grew very red indeed at this.

“I'm not asking anything for myself, Jake Benson, or for my Julia. I've stood on my own feet too long to want to go poking them into any one's else shoes, when I do you can tramp on my toes.”

“Oh, come, Gibbs!”

“Well, don't take up with the idea that I'm here to ask favours for myself, for I ain't! I've fetched you a relative,” said Gibbs.

The lawyer regarded him curiously. Gibbs disinterestedness was something he found exceedingly hard to credit.

“I don't know what I shall do about the boy,” he said at length. “But he will not suffer in the present; Mrs. Landray will care for him. He could not be in better hands.”

“It was the future Steve was thinking about when he wrote to you, Jake; and it will be pretty hard on Mrs. Landray if you leave the child with her until she becomes attached to him, and then take him away.”

“Mrs. Landray's attachments are all traditional. She is probably quite as fond of him this very minute as she will be ten years hence.”

“I'd almost say you were tricky, Jake; one gets damn little satisfaction out of you,” said Gibbs. He made one or two futile efforts after this to bring the lawyer back to the matter he had most at heart, but Benson baffled him, and in the end Gibbs retired to his room considerately helped thither by his host, and quite nonplussed by the other's perverseness.

Gibbs lingered in Benson two days as the lawyer's guest, and on the morning of the third started home to his Julia and the Golden West Saloon. He was satisfied that he had acted rather handsomely in a crisis; and he was cheered and sustained by the conviction that both Benson and Virginia appeared fully sensible of this.

“She's the reason Jake never married; well, in spite of his luck he's wanted one thing he couldn't have;” and the thought gave him no little satisfaction, his feeling toward Benson being then rather one of censure. “He owed it to me to say what he'd do for Steve's boy; it was distinctly my right to know, I wish I'd told him that.”

It might have been an added comfort to Gibbs had he known that his departure left the lawyer rather depressed, and wondering moodily why he should have the feeling he knew he had for Stephen and Stephen's boy. It seemed a long way back to the directness of those motives that had once influenced him for good. He rancorously lived over the past and the days slipped forward while he nursed his grudge. He did not see Virginia, and he made no effort to see the child.

Virginia's feeling of hurt and injury grew as the months passed and he made no sign; then quite unexpectedly he surprised her by calling.

“I suppose you have counted me rather remiss in the matter of Stephen's boy, Virginia,” he began smoothly.

“I don't know why you should think that. Perhaps there was no reason why you should feel any interest in him,” answered Virginia.

“You don't think that, Virginia. You know that Stephen wrote me just before his death? I understood Gibbs to say that he had told you of this letter—of its purport.”

“Yes,” but she glanced at him in some alarm.

“Stephen wished me to assume the burden of the boy's education. He knew that I could do more for him in a worldly way than you, Virginia, and he had tasted the bitterness of a struggle to make a place for himself. To write me, to feel that he must turn to me in his extremity, must have been a blow to his pride. In his letter the awkwardness of his constraint shows itself. The feeling he had for me remained with him to the end.”

She knew what he meant, but did not answer him. He went on.

“Years ago, Virginia, when Stark took the Landray farm, I made up my mind that some day you should return there. I have had to wait, but recently the farm was sold to me. It's a whim—a fancy, if you will—but I want you to go there and live.”

Virginia shook her head.

“I shall never go there,” she said.

“Wait!” he interposed quickly. “I want to sell you the place. Remember it was your home all those years; you went there when you first came to Benson.”

“I know—I remember,” said Virginia softly, and the shadow deepened in her eyes.

“You will reconsider? You will take the place off my hands?” he urged impatiently.

“No; I seem to have lost all desire to go back,” said Virginia almost sadly.

“Then I am too late,” he said bitterly. “It should belong to Stephen,” he urged, making his final appeal. “And it should come to him from you; it was his father's home, and his grandfather's, each generation has lived there since the Landrays came to Ohio; it should remain in the family.”

But Virginia only shook her head.

Benson, too, was silent, but he was more deeply hurt than he would allow even to himself. He had set his heart on her going back. It would be something accomplished in the way of reparation for the wrong he had done her; it would have made it the easier for him to endure the consciousness of that wrong, since he lived in its presence always; more than this, he had conceived it possible that amidst the old surroundings the old relationship might be re-established. He was haunted by his memories; he wished to know again the sentiment of days long past but unforgotten and unforgettable. And now, as always, he encountered her opposition, and realized that her will was stronger than his own; surely love had written failure large at each crisis of his life. It had made of him, an honest man, a trickster and a cheat. What was he living for; he was verging on fifty; there were moments when he felt his age in all its tragic incompleteness. He had been defrauded of what was best in life; unfruitful endeavour had embittered him, and shame was in his heart. After all, the wrong he had done her was insignificant when compared with the wrong she had done him, for he might at any time by a simple act well within his power make restitution; but nothing could give him back the years he had wasted in her service, and at every turn he had found her unyielding and determined, willing to profit by his devotion, but returning nothing.

“You were speaking of Stephen a moment ago,” said Virginia.

He did not answer her at once, his anger toward her had not left him.

“About the boy,” wheeling suddenly, and allowing his glance, moody and resentful, to rest upon her. “Perhaps you will think what I have to propose, unreasonable; but what little I have done for you has been done as you would have it, never as I wanted it, and we have both suffered unnecessarily in consequence; but with the boy, if I am to do for him it must be in my own way, otherwise I can do nothing.”

Virginia did not speak, but at his words the look of alarm came into her face again.

“It was Stephen's wish that I should assume the care of his son. He probably felt that I could do for him in ways you never can, Virginia. I will take the boy,” he said abruptly.

“You will do nothing of the kind,” answered Virginia quietly, but her eyes flashed.

He did not seem to hear her, for he continued:

“I have at last decided that I can do this. Perhaps it is my duty; after all, he is no more a Landray than he is a Benson.”

By a gesture Virginia seemed to put aside this idea. The boy had the Landray look.

“He is the image of his father,” she said tenderly.

Benson smiled.

“It has taken me a good while to decide what I can do, Virginia. I hope you have not given your heart wholly to the child.”

Still she did not fully comprehend the drift of what he was saying.

“If you will surrender him to me, I will make myself responsible for his future. I shall, of course, be willing that you should see him.”

“Willing I should see him!” exclaimed Virginia. “Mr. Benson, have you quite taken leave of your senses?”

“I mean that I do not care to share my responsibility with anyone, not even with you, Virginia; for I cannot believe in a divided authority in so serious a matter. The mistakes made in Stephen's case must not be made in his.”

“What were the mistakes?” cried Virginia. “Was there ever a better, braver boy—did he ever fail in affection? That he was unfortunate, that he too early in life took to himself burdens he should not have assumed is true enough, but his faults were the faults of a generous youth!”

“They were disastrous enough,” retorted Benson coldly. “And I wish to spare his son similar error, similar hardship. I don't expect you to decide to-day—”

“I have already decided,” answered Virginia. “I would not trust him to you.”

“When have I been unkind, Virginia?” he asked.

“I no longer feel that I know you,” she replied.

“There is one answer for that, one explanation; you Know what it is, Virginia,” he said still coldly.

“You blame me after all these years.”

“They have been lonely ones,” he said.

“Because I could not give you what was not mine to give.”

He ran his fingers through his thin grey hair, and smiled almost whimsically.

“I am not grateful for failure; I find that day by day I am taking more account of success, no matter what its kind; and but for you, Virginia, I might have been a happy man just as I have been a successful man; though after all success is easier won than happiness. You will want to know what I will promise on behalf of the boy, and it's quite right you should—”

“I have heard enough,” she said, but he went on unheeding her.

“You must remember that aside from Gibbs's wife, the boy is nearer me than any one else, and that I am a rich man; yet you are to understand that what I may do for him will be much or little as he proves himself worthy or unworthy. But he shall have every advantage that money will give. You are ambitious for him; he shall have a profession and a free and unhampered start in life. Can you do as much for him?”

“You know I cannot,” she said. “Why do you tempt me? Of course I am ambitious for him.”

“Then let me gratify you; I do not mean that you are to be entirely separated from him; but until he goes away to school I wish him to be an inmate of my house. This is not an unfair demand; you could hardly expect that I would ask less.”

“But how do I know how you will treat him?” asked Virginia.

“You can learn from the boy himself,” answered Benson smiling. “I did not suppose that you think me capable of unkindness or brutality,” he added with quiet sarcasm.

“He will be lonely.”

“Most likely,” said Benson composedly. “Understand, Virginia, if you prefer to be alone responsible for his future, I have no desire to interfere in your plans, though Stephen's letter gives me a definite claim; but I shall never urge this claim, it is simply that I do not believe in a divided authority; and I beg you to remember what Stephen's life was.”

“You must not speak of that to me, I could have saved him had I known!”

“It was the hardness of conditions that killed him. He only knew failure; and I have something better than that to offer his son. You love the boy, Virginia, how do you know I may not love him, too? Few men are more alone in the world than I, why should I not love him just as you love him?”

“My plans for him as I have thought them out, would be to send him away to school as soon as he is old enough. This I regard as necessary, for if he remains here, he will inevitably get a wrong idea, perhaps an injurious idea, as to his relation to me, and his expectations.”

“You have not even seen him,” said Virginia.

“But you tell me he is like his father. I was fond of his father once.”

“Yet you would do nothing for him,” she said bitterly.

“He did not want me to; he would have accepted nothing from me had I offered it. I don't reproach myself with anything there. It was only that his love for his son was a stronger passion than his pride, that made it possible for him to appeal to me.”

“But I am to see Stephen.”

“As often as you like, but he is to live with me, Virginia; this is to be clearly understood between us; my house will be his home. You can trust him to me quite safely, and I shall end by caring for him; perhaps not as you love him; but still I may feel deeply and sincerely toward him.”

“I will give you my answer in a few days,” said Virginia rising hastily.

“As you like,” said Benson, following her example, and a gleam of triumph flashed in his eyes. He knew what her answer would be.