"If I ever get to be a Turk or anything like that," said Watts McHurdie, in October, two months after the events recorded in the last chapter had occurred, as he sat astraddle of his bench, sewing on a bridle, "I'm going to have one red-headed wife—but not much more'n one."

Colonel Culpepper dropped a "Why?" into the reflections of the poet.

Watts replied, "Oh, just to complete the set!"

The colonel did not answer and Watts chuckled: "I figure out that women are a study. You learn this one and pat yourself on the breast-bone and say, 'Behold me, I'm on to women.' But you ain't. Another comes along and you have to begin at the beginning and learn 'em all over. I wonder if Solomon who had a thousand—more or less—got all his wisdom from them."

The colonel shook his head, and said sententiously, "Watts—they hain't a blame thing in it—not a blame thing." The creaking of the treadle on Watt's bench slit the silence for a few moments, and the colonel went on: "There can be educated fools about women, Watts McHurdie, just as there are educated fools about books. There's nothing in your theory of a liberal education in women. On the contrary, in all matters relating to and touching on affairs of the heart—beware of the man with one wife."

McHurdie flashed his yellow-toothed smile upon his friend and replied, "Or less than one?"

"No, sir, just one," answered Colonel Culpepper. "A man with a raft of wives, first and last, is like a fellow with good luck—the Lord never gives him anything else. And I may say in point of fact, that the man with no wife is like a man with bad luck—the Lord never gives him anything else, either!" The colonel slapped his right hand on his knee and exclaimed: "Watts McHurdie—what's the matter with you, man? Don't you see Nellie's all ready and waitin'—just fairly honin', and longin', I may say, for a home and a place to begin to live?"

McHurdie gave his treadle a jam and swayed forward over his work and answered, "Marry in haste—repent at leisure."

But nevertheless that night Watts sat with Nellie Logan on the front porch of the Wards' house, watching the rising harvest moon, while Mrs. Ward, inside, was singing to her baby. Nellie Logan roomed with the Wards, and was bookkeeper in Dorman's store. It was nearly ten o'clock and the man rose to go. "Well," he said, and hesitated a moment, "well, Nellie, I suppose you're still waiting?" It was a question rather than an assertion.

The woman put her hands gently on the man's arms and sighed. "I just can't—not yet, Watts."

"Well, I thought maybe you'd changed your mind." He smiled as he continued, "You know they say women do change sometimes."

She looked down at him sadly. "Yes, I know they do, but some way I don't."

There was a long pause while Watts screwed up his courage to say, "Still kind of thinking about that preacher?"

The woman had no animation in her voice as she replied, "You know that by now—without asking."

The man sat down on the step, and she sat on a lower step. He was silent for a time. Then he said, "Funny, ain't it?" She knew she was not to reply; for in a dozen years she had learned the man's moods. In a minute, during which he looked into his hat absent-mindedly, he went on: "As far as I've been able to make it out, love's a kind of a grand-right-and-left. I give my right hand to you, and you give yours to the preacher, and he gives his to some other girl, and she gives hers to some one else, like as not, who gives his to some one else, and the fiddle and the horn and the piano and the bass fid screech and toot and howl, and away we go and sigh under our breaths and break our hearts and swing our partners, and it's everybody dance." He looked up at her and smiled at his fancy. For he was a poet and thought his remarks had some artistic value.

She smiled back at him, and he leaned on his elbows and looked up at her as he said quietly: "I'd like awful well, Nellie—awful well if you'd be my partner for the rest of this dance. It's lonesome down there in the shop."

The woman patted his hand, and they sat quietly for a while and then she said, "Maybe sometime, Watts, but not to-night."

He got up, and stood for a moment beside her on the walk. "Well," he said at length, "I suppose I must be moving along—as the wandering Jew said." He smiled and their eyes met in the moonlight. Watts dropped his instantly, and exclaimed, "You're a terrible handsome girl, Nellie—? did you know it?" He repeated it and added, "And the Lord knows I love you, Nellie, and I've said it a thousand times." He found her hand again, and said as he put on his hat, "Well, good-by, Nellie—good-by—if you call that gone." His handclasp tightened and hers responded, and then he dropped her hand and turned away.

The woman felt a desire to scream; she never knew how she choked her desire. But she rushed after him and caught him tightly and sobbed, "Oh, Watts—Watts—Watts McHurdie—are you never going to have any more snap in you than that?"

As he kicked away the earth from under him, Watts McHurdie saw the light in a window of the Culpepper home, and when he came down to earth again five minutes later, he said, "Well, I was just a-thinking how nice it would be to go over to Culpeppers' and kind of tell them the news!"

"They'll have news of their own pretty soon, I expect," replied Nellie. And to Watts' blank look she replied: "The way that man Brownwell keeps shining around. He was there four nights last week, and he's been there two this week already. I don't see what Molly Culpepper can be thinking of."

So they deferred the visit to the Culpeppers', and in due time Watts McHurdie flitted down Lincoln Avenue and felt himself wafted along Main Street as far in the clouds as a mortal may be. And though it was nearly midnight, he brought out his accordion and sat playing it, beating time with his left foot, and in his closed eyes seeing visions that by all the rights of this game of life should come only to youth. And the guests in the Thayer House next morning asked, "Well, for heaven's sake, who was that playing 'Silver Threads among the Gold' along there about midnight?—he surely must know it by this time."

And Adrian Brownwell, sitting on the Culpepper veranda the next night but one, said: "Colonel, your harness-maker friend is a musical artist. The other night when I came in I heard him twanging his lute—'The Harp that once through Tara's Hall'; you know, Colonel."

And John Barclay closed his letter to Bob Hendricks: "Well, Bob, as I sit here with fifty letters written this evening and ready to mail, and the blessed knowledge that we have 18,000 acres of winter wheat all planted if not paid for, I can hear old Watts wheezing away on his accordion in his shop down street. Poor old Watts, it's a pity that man hasn't the acquisitive faculty—he could turn that talent into enough to keep him all his days. Poor old Watts!"

And Molly Culpepper, sitting in her bedroom chewing her penholder, finally wrote this: "Watts McHurdie went sailing by the house to-night, coming home from the Wards', where he was making his regular call on Nellie. You know what a mouse-like little walk he has, scratching along the sidewalk so demurely; but to-night, after he passed our place I heard him actually break into a hippety-hop, and as I was sitting on the veranda, I could hear him clicking clear down to the new stone walk in front of the post-office." Oho, Molly Culpepper, you said "as I was sitting on the veranda"; that is of course the truth, but not the whole truth; what you might have said was "as we were sitting on the veranda," and "as we were talking of what I like" and "what you like," and of "what I think" and "what you think," and as "I was listening to war tales from a Southern soldier," and as "I was finding it on the whole rather a tiresome business "; those things you might have written, Molly Culpepper, but you did not. And was it a twinge or a prick or a sharp reproachful stab of your conscience that made you chew the tip of your penholder into shreds and then madly write down this:—

"Bob, I don't know what is coming over me; but some way your letters seem so far away, and it has been such a long time since I saw you, a whole lonesome year, and Bob dear, I am so weak and so unworthy of you; I know it, oh, I know it. But I feel to-night that I must tell you something right from my heart. It is this, dear: no matter what may happen, I want you to know that I must always love you better than any one else in all the world. I seem so young and foolish, and life is so long and the world is so big—so big and you are so far away. But, Bob dear, my good true boy, don't forget this that I tell you to-night, that through all time and all eternity the innermost part of my heart must always be yours. No matter what happens to you and me in the course of life in the big world—you must never forget what I have written here to-night."

And these words, for some strange reason, were burned on the man's soul; though she had written him fonder ones, which passed from him with the years. The other words of the letter fell into his eyes and were consumed there, so he does not remember that she also wrote that night: "I have just been standing at my bedroom window, looking out over the town. It is quiet as the graveyard, save for the murmur of the waters falling over the dam. And I cannot tell whether it is fancy or whether it is real, but now and then there comes to me a faint hint of music,—it sounds almost like Watts' accordion, but of course it cannot be at this unholy hour, and the tune it makes me think of some way is 'Silver Threads among the Gold.' Isn't it odd that I should hear that song, and yet not hear it, and have it running through my mind?"

And thus the town heard Watts McHurdie's song of triumph—the chortle that every male creature of the human kind instinctively lets out when he has found favour in some woman's eyes, that men have let out since Lemech sang of victory over the young man to Adah and Zillah! And in all the town no one knew what it meant. For the accordion is not essentially an instrument of passion. So the episode ended, and another day came in. And all that is left to mark for this world that night of triumph—and that mark soon will bleach into oblivion—are the verses entitled "Love at Sunset," of which Colonel Martin Culpepper, the poet's biographer, writes in that chapter "At Hymen's Altar," referred to before: "This poem was written October 14, 1874, on the occasion of the poet's engagement to Miss Nellie Logan, who afterward became his wife. By many competent critics, including no less a personage than Hon. John Barclay, president of the National Provisions Company, this poem is deemed one of Mr. McHurdie's noblest achievements, ranking second only to the great song that gave him national fame."

And it should be set down as an integral part of this narrative that John Barclay first read the verses "Love at Sunset" in the Banner, two weeks after the night of their composition, as he was finishing a campaign for the Fifth Parallel bonds. He picked up the Banner one evening at twilight in a house in Pleasant township, and seeing Watts' initials under some verses, read them at first mechanically, and then reread them with real zest, and so deeply did they move the man from the mooring of the campaign that seeing an accordion on the table of the best room in which he was waiting for supper, Barclay picked it up and fooled with it for half an hour. It had been a dozen years since he had played an accordion, and the tunes that came into his fingers were old tunes in vogue before the war, and he thought of himself as an old man, though he was not yet twenty-five. But the old tunes brought back his boyhood from days so remote that they seemed a long time past. And that night when he addressed the people in the Pleasant Valley schoolhouse, he was half an hour getting on to the subject of the bonds; he dwelt on the old days and spoke of the drouth of '60 and of the pioneers, and preached a sermon, with their lives for texts, on the value of service without thought of money or hope of other reward than the joy one has in consecrated work. Then he launched into the bond proposition, and when the votes were counted Pleasant township indorsed Barclay's plan overwhelmingly. For he was a young man of force, if not of eloquence. His evident sincerity made up for what he lacked in oratorical charm, and he left an impression on those about him. So when the bonds carried in Garrison County, the firm of Ward and Barclay was made local attorneys for the road, and General Ward, smarting under the defeat of his party in the state, refused to accept the railroad's business, and the partnership was dissolved.

"John," said Ward, as he put his hands on the young man's shoulders and looked at him a kindly moment, before picking up his bushel basket of letters and papers, to move them into another room and dissolve the partnership, "John," the elder man repeated, "if I could always maintain such a faith in God as you maintain in money and its power, I could raise the dead."

Barclay blinked a second and replied, "Well, now, General, look here—what I don't understand is how you expect to accomplish anything without money."

"I can't tell you, John—but some way I have faith that I can—can do more real work in this world without bothering to get money, than I can by stopping to get money with which to do good."

"But if you had a million, you could do more good with it than you are doing now, couldn't you?" asked Barclay.

"Yes, perhaps I could," admitted the general, as he eyed his miserable little pile of worldly goods in the basket. "I suppose I could," he repeated meditatively.

"All right then, General," cut in Barclay. "I have no million, any more than you have; but I'm going to get one—or two, maybe a dozen if I can, and I want to do good with it just as much as you do. When I get it I'll show you." Barclay rose to lend the general a hand with his basket. As they went awkwardly through the door with the load, the general stopping to get a hold on the basket that would not twist his hand, he put the load down in the hall and said: "But while you're getting that million, you're wasting God's ten talents, boy. Can't you see that if you would use your force, your keenness, and persistence helping mankind in some way—teaching, preaching, lending a hand to the poor, or helping to fight organized greed, you would get more of God's work done than you will by squeezing the daylights out of your fellow-men, making them hate money because of your avarice, and end by doling it out to them in charity? That's my point, boy. That's why I don't want your railroad job."

They had dropped the basket in the bare room. The general had not so much as a chair or a desk. He looked it over, and Barclay's eyes followed his. "What are you going to do for furniture?" asked the younger man.

The general's thin face wrinkled into a smile. "Well," he replied, "I suppose that if a raven can carry dry-goods, groceries, boots and shoes and drugs, paints and oils,—and certainly the ravens have been bringing those things to the Wards for eight years now, and they're all paid for,—the blessed bird can hump itself a little and bring some furniture, stoves, and hardware."

Barclay limped into his room, while the general rubbed the dust off the windows. In a minute John came stumbling in with a chair, and as he set it down he said, "Here comes the first raven, General, and now if you'll kindly come and give the ravens a lift, they'll bring you a table." And so the two men dragged the table into the office, and as they finished, Ward saw General Hendricks coming up the stairs, and when the new room had been put in order,—a simple operation,—General Ward hurried home to help Mrs. Ward get in their dahlia roots for the winter.

As they were digging in the garden, covering the ferns and wrapping the magnolia tree they had lately acquired, and mulching the perennials, Mrs. Mary Barclay came toward them buffeting the wind. She wore the long cowlish waterproof cloak and hood of the period—which she had put on during the cloudy morning. Her tall strong figure did not bend in the wind, and the schoolbooks she carried in her hand broke the straight line of her figure only to heighten the priestess effect that her approaching presence produced.

"Well, children," she said, as she stood by the Wards at their work, "preparing your miracles?" She looked at the bulbs and roots, and smiled. "How wonderful that all the beauty of the flowers should be in those scrawny brown things; and," she added as she brushed away the brown hair of her forties from her broad brow, "God probably thinks the same thing when He considers men and their souls."

"And when the gardener puts us away for our winter's sleep?" Ward asked.

She turned her big frank blue eyes upon him as she took the words from his mouth, "'And the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.'" Then she smiled sadly and said, "But it is the old Adam himself that I seem to be wrestling with just now."

"In the children—at school?" asked the Wards, one after the other. She sighed and looked at the little troopers straggling along the highway, and replied, "Yes, partly that, too," and throwing her unnecessary hood back, turned her face into the wind and walked quickly away. The Wards watched her as she strode down the hill, and finally as he bent to his work the general asked:—

"Lucy, what does she think of John?"

Mrs. Ward, who was busy with a geranium, did not reply at once. But in a moment she rose and, putting the plant with some others that were to go to the cellar, replied: "Oh, Phil—you know a mother tries to hope against hope. She teaches her school every day, and keeps her mind busy. But sometimes, when she stops in here after school or for lunch, she can't help dropping things that let me know. I think her heart is breaking, Phil."

"Does she know about the wheat deal—I mean about the way he has made the farmers sign that mortgage by cutting them off from borrowing money at the bank?"

"Not all of it—but I think she suspects," replied the wife.

"Did you know, dear," said the general, as he put the plants in the barrow to wheel them to the cellar, "that I ran across something to-day—it may be all suspicion, and I don't want to wrong John—but Mart Culpepper, God bless his big innocent heart, let something slip—well, it was John, I think, who arranged for that loan of ten thousand from Brownwell to Mart. Though why he didn't get it at the bank, I don't know. But John had some reason. Things look mighty crooked there at the bank. I know this—Mart says that Brownwell lent him the money, and Mart lent it to the bank for a month there in August, while he was holding the Chicago fellow in the air."

Mrs. Ward sat down on the front steps of the porch, and exclaimed:—

"Well, Phil Ward—that's why the Culpeppers are so nice to Brownwell. Honestly, Phil, the last time I was over Mrs. Culpepper nearly talked her head off to me and at Molly about what a fine man he is, and told all about his family, and connections—he's related to the angel Gabriel on his mother's side," she laughed, "and he's own cousin to St. Peter through the Brownwells."

"Oh, I guess they're innocent enough about it—they aren't mercenary," interrupted the general.

"Oh, no," replied Mrs Ward, "never in the world; but he's been good to them and he's of their stock—and it's only natural."

"Yes, probably," replied the general, and asked, "Does she intend to marry him, do you think?" Mrs. Ward was sorting some dahlia roots on the wheelbarrow and did not reply at once. "Do you suppose they're engaged?" repeated the general.

"I often wonder," she returned, still at her task. Then she rose, holding a bulb in her hands, and said: "It's a funny kind of relation. Her father and mother egging her on—and you know that kind of a man; give him an inch and he'll take an ell. I wonder how far he has got." She took the bulb to a pile near the rear of the house. "Those are the nice big yellow ones I'm saving for Mrs. Barclay. But I'm sure of one thing, Molly has no notion of marrying Brownwell." She continued: "Molly is still in love with Bob. She was over here last week and had a good cry and told me so."

"Well, why doesn't she send this man about his business?" exclaimed the general.

Mrs. Ward sighed a little and replied, "Because—there is only one perfect person in all the world, and that's you." She smiled at him and continued: "The rest of us, dear, are just flesh and blood. So we make mistakes. Molly knows she should; she told me so the other day. And she hates herself for not doing it. But, dearie—don't you see she thinks if she does, her father and mother will lose the big house, and Bob will be involved in some kind of trouble? They keep that before her all of the time. She says that John is always insisting that she be nice to Brownwell. And you know the Culpeppers think Brownwell is—well, you know what they think."

They worked along for a while, and the general stopped and put his foot on his spade and cried: "That boy—that boy—that boy! Isn't he selling his soul to the devil by bits? A little chunk goes every day. And oh, my dear, my dear—" he broke out, "what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Poor, poor John." He fell to his work again, sighing, "Poor John, poor John!" So they talked on until the afternoon grew old.

And while they were talking, John and General Hendricks were in Barclay's office going over matters, and seeing where they stood.

"So he says seventy thousand is too much for the company and me to owe?" said John, at the end of half an hour's conference.

The general was drumming his fingers on the table nervously. "Yes—he says we've got to reduce that in thirty days, or he'll close us up. Haven't you got any political influence, somewhere in the East, John,—some of those stockholders,—that will hold this matter up till you can harvest your crop next June?"

Barclay thought a moment, with his hand in his chin, and then slowly shook his head. A bank inspector from Washington was several degrees higher in the work of politics than Barclay had gone.

"Let me see—" droned Barclay; "let me see. We can at least try scattering it out a little; cut off, say, fifty thousand from me and the company and put it in the name of Lige—"

"He's on to Lige, we've got a hat full of Lige's notes in there," interrupted the general.

"All right, then, drop Lige and put in the colonel—he'll do that for me, and I'll see if I can't get the colonel to get Brownwell to accommodate us. He's burning a good bit of the colonel's stove wood these nights." Barclay smiled, and added, "And I'll just put Bob in for a few thousand."

"But what'll we do about those taxes?" asked the general, anxiously. "You know they've got to be paid before the first of the year, and that's only six weeks off."

Barclay rose and paced the rug, and replied: "Yes, that's so. I was going to make another note for them. But I suppose we oughtn't to do it even under cover; for if he found out you had exceeded our loan right now—you know those fellows get ugly sometimes." The young man screwed up his face and stood looking out of the window in silence for a long minute. Then he limped over to his chair and sat down as one who has a plan. "Say now, General; you know Gabe Carnine's coming in as county treasurer right after the first of the year, and we will make him help us. You make your personal check for the nine thousand, and give it to the old cuss who's in the county treasurer's office now, with the descriptions of the land, and get the tax receipts; he'll bring the check back to the bank; you give him credit on his pass-book with the other checks, and just hold your own check out in the drawer as cash. If my check was in there, the inspector might drop in and see it, and cause a disturbance. When Gabe comes in, I'll make him carry the matter over till next summer."

The transaction would cover only a few days, Barclay explained; and finally he had his way. So the Larger Good was accomplished.

And later Adrian Brownwell came into the office to say:—

"Mr. Barclay, our friend, Colonel Culpepper, confessed to me after some transparent attempts at subterfuge that my signing an accommodation note would help you, and do I understand this also will help our young friend, Robert Hendricks, whom I have never seen, and enable him to remain at his post during the winter?"

John Barclay took a square hard look at Brownwell, and got a smile and a faint little shrug in return, whereupon, for the Larger Good, he replied "Yes," and for the Larger Good also, perhaps, Adrian Brownwell answered:

"Well, I shall be delighted—just make my note for thirty days—only thirty days, you understand; and then—well, of course if circumstances justify it, I'll renew it." Barclay laughed and asked, "Well, Mr. Brownwell, as between friends may I ask how 'circumstances' are getting on?"

Brownwell shrugged his shoulders and smiled blandly as he answered: "Just so-so; I go twice a week. And—" he waved his gloves airily and continued, "What is it the immortal Burns says: 'A man's a man, for a' that and a' that!' And I'm a man, John Barclay, and she's a woman. And I go twice a week. You know women, sir, you know women—they're mostly all alike. So I think—" he smirked complacently as he concluded—"I think what I need is time—only time."

"Luck to you," said Barclay. "I'll just make the note thirty days, as you say, and we can renew it from time to time."

Then Brownwell put on his hat, twirled his cane effusively, and bade Barclay an elaborate adieu.

And ten days later, Molly Culpepper, loathing herself in her soul, and praying for the day of deliverance when it should be all over, walked slowly from the post-office up the hill to the house, the stately house, with its impressive pillars, reading this: "My darling Girl: John has sent me some more mortgages to sell, and they have to be sold now. He says that father has to have the money, and he and father have laid out work for me that will keep me here till the middle of January. John says that the government inspector has been threatening us with serious trouble in the bank lately, and we must have the money. He says the times have forced us to do certain things that were technically wrong—though I guess they were criminally wrong from what he says, and we must have this money to make things good. So I am compelled to stay here and work. Father commands me to stay in a way that makes me fear that my coming home now would mean our ruin. What a brick John is to stay there and shoulder it all. But, oh, darling, darling, darling, I love you."

There was more, of course, and it was from a man's heart, and the strange and sad part of this story is that when Molly Culpepper read the rest of the letter, her heart burned in shame, and her shame was keener than her sorrow that her lover was not coming home.

So it happened naturally that Molly Culpepper went to the Christmas dance with Adrian Brownwell, and when Jane Barclay, seeing the proprietary way the Alabaman hovered over Molly, and his obvious jealousy of all the other men who were civil to her, asked John why he did not let Bob come home for the holidays, as he had promised, for the Larger Good John told her the facts—that there were some mortgages that had just come in, and they must be sold, so that the company could reduce its indebtedness to the bank. But the facts are not always the truth, and in her heart, which did not reason but only felt, Molly Culpepper, knowing that Brownwell and John Barclay were in some kind of an affair together, feared the truth. And from her heart she wrote to her lover questioning John's motives and pleading with him to return, and he, having merely the facts, did not see the truth, and replied impatiently—so impatiently that it hurt, and there was temper in her answer, and then for over a week no letter came, and for over a week no reply went back to that. And so the Larger Good was doing its fine work in a wicked world.