In the summer of 1904, following the death of Robert Hendricks, John Barclay spent much time in the Ridge, more time than he had spent there for thirty years. For in the City he was a marked man. Every time the market quivered, reporters rushed to get his opinion about the cause of the disturbance; the City papers were full of stories either of his own misdeeds, or of the wrong-doings of other men of his caste. His cronies were dying all about him of broken hearts or wrecked minds, and it seemed to him that the word "indictment" was in every column of every newspaper, was on every man's lips, and literally floated in the air.

So he remained in Sycamore Ridge much of the time, and every fair afternoon he rowed himself up the mill-pond to fish. He liked to be alone; for when he was alone, he could fight the battle in his soul without interruption. The combat had been gathering for a year; a despair was rising in him, that he concealed from his womenkind—who were his only intimate associates in those days—as if it had been a crime. But out on the mill-pond alone, casting minnows for bass, he could let the melancholy in his heart rage and battle with his sanity, without let or hindrance. His business was doing well; the lawsuits against the company in a dozen states were not affecting dividends, and the department in charge of his charities was forwarding letters of condolence and consolation from preachers and college presidents, and men who under the old regime had been in high walks of life. Occasionally some conservative newspaper or magazine would praise him and his company highly; but he knew the shallowness of all the patter of praise. He knew that he paid for it in one way or another, and he grew cynical; and in his lonely afternoons on the river, often he laughed at the whole mockery of his career, smiled at the thought of organized religion, licking his boots for money like a dog for bones, and then in his heart he said there is no God. Once, to relieve the pain of his soul's woe, he asked aloud, who is God, anyway, and then laughed as he thought that the bass nibbling at his minnow would soon think he, John Barclay, was God. The analogy pleased him, and he thought that his own god, some devilish fate, had the string through his gills at that moment and was preparing to cast him into the fire. Up in the office in the city, they went on making senators and governors, and slipping a federal judge in where they could, but he had little hand in it, for his power was a discarded toy. He sat in his boat alone, rowing for miles and miles, from stump to stump, and from fallen tree-top to tree-top, hating the thing he called God, and distrusting men.

But when he appeared in the town, or at home, he was cheerful enough; he liked to mingle with the people, and it fed his despair to notice what a hang-dog way they had with him. He knew they had been abusing him behind his back, and when he found out exactly what a man had said, he delighted in facing the man down with it.

"So you think John Barclay could have saved Bob Hendricks' life, do you, Oscar?" asked Barclay, as he overhauled Fernald coming out of the post-office.

"Who said so?" asked Fernald, turning red.

"Oh," chuckled Barclay, "I got it from the hired girls' wireless news agency. But you said it all right—you said it, Oscar; you said it over to Ward's at dinner night before last." And Barclay grinned maliciously.

Fernald scratched his head, and said, "Well, John, to be frank with you, that's the talk all over town—among the people."

"The people—the people," snapped Barclay, impatiently, "the people take my money for bridges and halls and parks and churches and statues and then call me a murderer—oh, damn the people! Who started this story?"

"See Jake Dolan, John—it's up to him. He can satisfy you," said Fernald, and turned, leaving Barclay in the street.

Up the hill trudged the gray-clad little man, with his pugnacious shoulders weaving and his bronzed face set hard and his mean jaw locked. On the steps of the court-house he found Jake Dolan, smoking a morning pipe with the loafers in the shade of the building.

"Here you, Jake Dolan," called Barclay, "what do you mean by accusing me of murdering Bob Hendricks? What did I have to do with it?"

"Easy, easy, Johnnie, my boy," returned Dolan, knocking the ashes from his pipe on the steps between his feet. "Gentlemen," said Dolan, addressing the crowd, "you've heard what our friend says. All right—come with me to my office, Johnnie Barclay, and I'll show you." Barclay followed Dolan into the basement of the court-house, with the crowd at a respectful distance. "Right this way—" and Dolan switched on an electric light. "Do you see that break in the foundation, Mr. Barclay? You do? And you know in your soul that it opens into the cave that leads to the cellar of your own house. Well, then, Mr. Johnnie Barclay—the book that contained the evidence against Bob Hendricks did not go out of this court-house by the front door, as you well know, but through that hole—stolen at night when I was out; and the man who stole it was the horse thief that used to run the cave—your esteemed friend, Lige Bemis."

The crowd was gaping at the rickety place in the foundation, and one man pulled a loose stone out and let the cold air of the cave into the room.

"Lige Bemis came to your house, Mr. Johnnie Barclay, got into the cave from your cellar, broke through this wall, and stole the book that contained the forgery made to cover General Hendricks' disgrace. And who caused that disgrace but the overbearing, domineering John Barclay, who made that old man steal to pay John Barclay's taxes, back in the grasshopper year, when the sheriff and the jail were almost as familiar to him as they are now,—by all counts. Ah, John Barclay," said the Irishman, turning to the crowd, "John Barclay, John Barclay—you're a brave little man sometimes; I've seen you when I was most ungodly proud of you; I've seen you do grand things, my little man, grand things. But you're a coward too, Johnnie; sitting in your own house while your horse-thief friend used your cellar to work out the disgrace of the man who gave his good name to save your own—that was a fine trick—a damn fine trick, wasn't it, Mr. Barclay?"

Barclay started to go, but the crowd blocked his way. Dolan saw that Barclay was trying to escape. "Turn tail, will you, my little man? Wait one minute," cried Dolan. "Wait one minute, sir. For what was you conniving against the big man? I know—to win your game; to win your miserable little game. Ah, what a pup a man can be, Johnnie, what a mangy, miserable, cowardly little pup a man can be when he tries—and a decent man, too. Money don't mean anything to you—you got past that, but it's to win the game. Why, man, look at yourself—look at yourself—you'd cheat your own mother playing cards with matches for counters—just to win the game." Dolan waved for the crowd to break. "Let him out of here, and get out yourselves—every one of you. This is public property you're desecrating."

Dolan sat alone in his office, pale and trembling after the crowd had gone. Colonel Culpepper came puffing in and saw the Irishman sitting with his head in his hands and his elbows on the table.

"What's this, Jake—what's this I hear?" asked the colonel.

"Oh, nothing," answered Dolan, and then he looked up at the colonel with sad, remorseful eyes. "What a fool—what a fool whiskey in a man's tongue is—what a fool." He reached under his cot for his jug, and repeated as he poured the liquor into a glass, "What a fool, what a fool, what a fool." And then, as he gulped it down and made a wry face, "Poor little Johnnie at the mill; I didn't mean to hit him so hard—not half so hard. What a fool, what a fool," and the two old men started off for the harness shop together.

Neal Ward that night, in the Banner office alone, wrote to his sweetheart the daily letter that was never mailed.

"How sweet it is," he writes, "to have you at home. Sometimes I hear your voice through the old leaky telephone, talking to Aunt Molly; her phone and ours are through the same board, and your voice seems natural then, and unstrained, not as it is when we meet. But I know that some way we are meeting—our souls—in the infinite realm outside ourselves—beyond our consciousness—either sleeping or waking. Last night I dreamed a strange dream. A little girl, like one of the pictures in mother's old family photograph album, seemed to be talking with me,—dressed so quaintly in the dear old fashion of the days when mother taught the Sycamore Ridge School. She seemed to be playing with me in some way, and then she said: 'Oh, yes, I am your telephone; she knows all about it. I tell her every night as we play together.' And then she was no longer a little girl but a most beautiful soul and she said with great gentleness: 'In her heart she loves you—in her heart she loves you. This I know, only she is proud—proud with the Barclay pride; but in her heart she loves you; is not that enough?' What a strange dream! I wonder where we are—we who animate our bodies, when we sleep. What is sleep, but the proof that death is but a sleep? Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette, come into my soul as we sleep."

He folded the letter, sealed and addressed it, and dated the envelope, and put it in his desk—the desk before which Adrian Brownwell had sat, eating his heart out in futile endeavour to find his place in the world. Neal Ward had cleaned out one side of the desk, and was using that for his own. Mrs. Brownwell kept her papers in the other side, and one key locked them both. As he walked home that night under the stars, his heart was full of John Barclay's troubles. Neal knew Barclay well enough to know that the sensitive nature of the man, with his strongly developed instinctive faculty for getting at the truth, would be his curse in the turmoil or criticism through which he was going. So a day or two later Neal was not surprised to find a long statement in the morning press despatches from Barclay explaining and defending the methods of the National Provisions Company. He proved carefully that the notorious Door Strip saved large losses in transit of the National Provisions Company's grain and grain produce, and showed that in paying him for the use of these strips the railroad companies were saving great sums for widowed and orphaned stockholders of railroads—sums which would be his due for losses in transit if the strips were not used.

Neal Ward knew what it had cost Barclay in pride to give out that statement; so the young man printed it on the first page of the Banner with a kind editorial about Mr. Barclay and his good works. That night when the paper was off, and young Ward was working on the books of his office, he was called to the telephone.

"Is this you, Nealie Ward?" asked a woman's voice—the strong, clear, deep voice of an old woman. And when he had answered, the voice went on: "Well, Nealie, I wish to thank you for that editorial about John to-night in the paper; I'm Mary Barclay. It isn't more than half true, Nealie; and if it was all true, it isn't a fraction of what the truth ought to be if John did what he could, but it will do him a lot of good—right here in the home paper, and—Why, Jennie, I'm speaking with Nealie Ward,—why, do you think I am not old enough to talk with Nealie without breeding scandal?—as I was saying, my dear, it will cheer John up a little, and heaven knows he needs something. I'm—Jennie, for mercy sakes keep still; I know Nealie Ward and I knew his father when he wasn't as old as Nealie—did his washing for him; and boarded his mother four winters, and I have a right to say what I want to to that child." The boy and the grandmother laughed into the telephone. "Jennie is so afraid I'll do something improper," laughed Mrs. Barclay. "Oh, yes, by the way—here's a little item for your paper to-morrow: Jennie's mother is sick; I think it's typhoid, but you can't get John to admit it. So don't say typhoid." Then with a few more words she rang off.

When the Banner printed the item about Mrs. Barclay's illness, the town, in one of those outbursts of feeling which communities often have, seemed to try to show John Barclay the affection that was in their hearts for the man who had grown up among them, and the family that had been established under his name. Flowers—summer flowers—poured in on the Barclays. Children came with wild flowers, prairie flowers that Jane Barclay had not seen since she roamed over the unbroken sod about Minneola as a girl; and Colonel Culpepper came marching up the walk through the Barclay grounds, bearing his old-fashioned bouquet, as grandly as an ambassador bringing a king's gift. Jane Barclay sent word that she wished to see him.

"My dear," said the colonel, as he held the flowers toward her, "accept these flowers from those who have shared your bounty—from God's poor, my dear; these are God's smiles that they send you from their hearts—from their very hearts, my dear, from their poor hearts wherein God's smiles come none too often." She saw through glistening eyes the broken old figure, with his coat tightly buttoned on that July day to hide some shabbiness underneath. But she bade the colonel sit down, and they chatted of old times and old places and old faces for a few minutes; and the colonel, to whom any sort of social function was a rare and sweet occasion, stayed until the nurse had to beckon him out of the room over Mrs. Barclay's shoulder.

General Ward sent a note with a bunch of monthly blooming roses.

"My dear Jane (he wrote): These roses are from slips we got from John's mother when we planted our little yard. This red one is from the very bush on which grew the rose John wore at his wedding. Pin it on the old scamp to-night, and see how he will look. He was a dapper little chap that night, and the years have hardly begun their work on him; or perhaps he is such a tough customer that he dulls the chisel of time. I do not know, and so long as it is so, you do not care, but we both know, and are both glad that of all the many things God has sent you in thirty years, he has sent you nothing so fine as the joy that came with the day John wore this rose for you—a joy that has grown while the rose has faded. And may this rose renew your joy for another thirty years."

John read the note when he came in from the mill that evening, and Jane watched the years slip off his face. He looked into the past as it spread itself on the carpet near the bed.

"Well, well, well," he said, as he smiled into the picture he saw, "I remember as well the general bringing that rose down to the office that morning, wrapped in blue tissue paper from cotton batting rolls! The package was tied with fancy red braid that used to bind muslin bolts." He laughed quietly, and asked, "Jane, do you remember that old red braid?" The sick woman nodded. "Well, with the little blue package was a note from Miss Lucy, which said that my old teacher could not give me a present that year—times were cruelly hard then, you remember—but that she could and did put the blessing of her prayers on the rose, that all that it witnessed at my wedding would bring me happiness." He sat for a moment in silence, and, as the nurse was gone, he knelt beside the sick woman and kissed her. And as the wife stroked his head she whispered, "How that prayer has been answered, John—dear, hasn't it?" And the great clock in the silent hall below ticked away some of the happiest minutes it had ever measured.

But when he passed out of the sick room, the world—the maddening press of affairs, and the combat in his soul—snapped back on his shoulders with a mental click as though a load had fallen into its old place. He stood before his organ, and could not press the keys. As he sat there in the twilight made by the shaded electric lamps, the struggle rose in his heart against the admission of anything into his scheme of life but material things, and the conflict raged unchecked. What a silliness, he said, to think that the mummery of a woman over a rose could affect a life. Life is what the succession of the days brings. The thing is or is not, he said to himself, and the gibber about prayer and the moral force that moves the universe is for the weak-minded. So he took his hell to bed with him as it went every night, and during the heavy hours when he could not sleep, he tiptoed into the sick room, and looked at the thin face of his wife, sleeping a restless, feverish sleep, and a great fear came into his heart.

Once as the morning dawned he asked the nurse whom he met in the hall, "Is it typhoid?"

She was a stranger to the town, and she said to him, "What does the doctor tell you?"

"That's not the point," he insisted. "What do you think?"

She looked at him for an undecided moment and replied, "I'm not paid to think, Mr. Barclay," and went past him with her work. But he knew the truth. He went to his bed, and threw himself upon it, a-tremble with remorse and fear, and the sneer in his heart stilled his lips and he could not look outside himself for help. So the morning came, and another day, bringing its thousand cares, faced him, like a jailer with his tortures.

Time dragged slowly in the sick room and at the mill. One doctor brought another, and the Barclay private car went far east and came flying back with a third. The town knew that Mrs. John Barclay was dangerously sick. There came hopeful days when the patient's mind was clear; on one of these days Mrs. McHurdie called, and they let her see the sick woman. She brought some flowers.

"In the flowers, Jane," she said, "you will find something from Watts." Mrs. McHurdie smiled. "You know he sat up till 'way after midnight last night, playing his accordion. Oh, it's been years since he has touched it. And this morning when I got up, I found him sitting by the kitchen table, writing. It's a poem for you." Mrs. McHurdie looked rather sheepish as she said: "You know how Watts is, Jane; he just made me bring it. You can read it when you get well."

They hurried Mrs. McHurdie out, and when Jane Barclay went to sleep, they found tears on her pillow, and in her hand the verses,—the limping, awkward verses of an old man, whose music only echoed back from the past. The nurses and the young doctor from Boston had a good laugh at it. Each of the four stanzas began with two lines that asked: "Oh, don't you remember the old river road, that ran through the sweet-scented wood?" To them it was a curious parody on something old and quaint that they had long since forgotten. But to the woman who lay murmuring of other days, whose lips were parched for the waters of brooks that had surrendered to the plough a score of years ago, the halting verses of Watts McHurdie were laden with odours of grape blossoms, of wild cucumbers and sumach, of elder blossoms, and the fragrance of the crushed leaves of autumn. And the music of distant ripples played in her feverish brain and the sobbing voice of the turtle dove sang out of the past for her as she slept. All through the day and the night and for many nights and days she whispered of the trees and the running water and the wild grass and the birds.

And so one morning when it was still gray, she woke and said to John, who bent over her, "Why, dear, we are almost home; there are the lights across the river; just one more hill, dearie, and then—" And then with the water prattling in her ears at the last ford she turned to the wall and sank to rest.

Day after day, until the days and nights became a week and the week repeated itself until nearly a month was gone, John Barclay, dry-eyed and all but dumb, paced the terrace before his house by night, and by day roamed through the noisy mill or wandered through his desolate house, seeking peace that would not come to him. The whole foundation of his scheme of life was crumbling beneath him. He had built thirty-five years of his manhood upon the theory that the human brain is the god of things as they are and as they must be. The structure of his life was an imposing edifice, and men called it great and successful. Yet as he walked his lonely way in those black days that followed Jane's death, there came into his consciousness a strong, overmastering conviction, which he dared not accept, that his house was built on sand. For here were things outside of his plans, outside of his very beliefs, coming into his life, bringing calamity, sorrow, and tragedy with them into his own circle of friends, into his own household, into his own heart. As he walked through the dull, lonely hours he could not escape the vague feeling, though he fought it as one mad fights for his delusion, that all the tragedies piling up about him came from his own mistakes. Over and over again he threshed the past. Molly Brownwell's cry, "You have sold me into bondage, John Barclay," would not be stilled, though at times he could smile at it; and the broken body and shamed face of her father haunted him like an obsession. Night after night when he tried to sleep, Robert Hendricks' letter burned in fire before his eyes, and at last so mad was the struggle in his soul that he hugged these things to him that he might escape the greater horror: the dreadful red headlines in the sensational paper they had sent him from the City office which screamed at him, "John Barclay slays his wife—Aids a water franchise grab that feeds the people typhoid germs and his own wife dies of the fever." He had not replied to the letter from the law department of the Provisions Company which asked if he wished to sue for libel, and begged him to do so. He had burned the paper, but the headlines were seared into his brain.

Over and over he climbed the fiery ladder of his sins: the death of General Hendricks, the sacrifice of Molly Culpepper, the temptation and fall of her father, the death of his boyhood's friend, and then the headlines. These things were laid at his door, and over and over again, like Sisyphus rolling the stones uphill, he swept them away from his threshold, only to find that they rolled right back again. And with them came at times the suspicion that his daughter's unhappiness was upon him also. And besides these things, a hundred business transactions wherein he had cheated and lied for money rose to disturb him. And through it all, through his anguish and shame, the faith of his life kept battling for its dominion.

Once he sent for Bemis and tried to talk himself into peace with his friend. He did not speak of the things that were corroding his heart, but he sat by and heard himself chatter his diabolic creed as a drunkard watches his own folly.

"Lige," he said, "I'm sick of that infernal charities bureau we've got. I'm going to abolish it. These philanthropic millionaires make me sick at the stomach, Lige. What do they care for the people? They know what I know, that the damn people are here to be skinned." He laughed viciously and went on: "Sometimes I think we filthy rich are divided into two classes: those of us who keep mistresses, and those of us who have harmless little entanglements with preachers and college presidents. Neither the lemon-haired women nor the college presidents interfere with our business; they don't hamper us—not the slightest. They just take our money, and for a few idle hours amuse us, and make us feel that we are good fellows. As for me, I'll have neither women nor college presidents purring around my ankles. I'm going to cut out the philanthropy appropriation to-day."

And he was as good as his word. But that did not help. The truth kept wrenching his soul, and his feet blindly kept trying to find a path to peace.

It was late one night in August, and a dead moon was hanging in the south, when, treading the terrace before his house, he saw a shadow moving down the stairway in the hall. At first his racked nerves quivered, but when he found that it was his mother, he went to meet her, exclaiming as he mounted the steps to the veranda, "Why, mother, what is it—is anything wrong?"

Though it was past midnight, Mary Barclay was dressed for the day. She stood in the doorway with the dimmed light behind her, a tall, strong woman, straight and gaunt as a Nemesis. "No, John—nothing is wrong—in the house." She walked into the veranda and began as she approached a chair, "Sit down, John; I wish to talk with you."

"Well, mother—what is it?" asked the son, as he sat facing her.

She paused a moment looking earnestly at his face and replied, "The time has come when we must talk this thing out, John, soul to soul."

He shrank from what was coming. His instinct told him to fight away the crisis. He began to palaver, but his mother cut him short, as she exclaimed:—

"Why don't you let Him in, John?"

"Let who in?" asked her son.

"You know Whom, John Barclay; that was your grandfather speaking then, the old polly foxer. You know, my boy. Don't you remember me bending over the town wash-tub when you were a child, Johnnie? Don't you remember the old song I used to sing—of course you do, child—as I rubbed the clothes on the board: 'Let Him in, He is your friend, let Him in, He is your friend; He will keep you to the end—let—Him—in!' Of course you remember it, boy, and you have been fighting Him with all your might for six months now, and since Jane went, the fight is driving you crazy—can't you see, John?"

The son did not reply for a moment, then he said, "Oh, well, mother, that was all right in that day, but—"

"John Barclay," cried the mother sternly, as she leaned toward him, "the faith that bore your father a martyr to the grave, sustained me in this wilderness, and kept me happy as I scrubbed for your bread, shall not be scoffed in my presence. We are going to have this thing out to-night. I, who bore you, and nursed you, and fed you, and staked my soul on your soul, have some rights to-night. Here you are, fifty-four years old, and what have you done? You've killed your friend and your friend's father before him—I know that, John. You've wrecked the life of the sister of your first sweetheart, and put fear and disgrace in her father's face forever—forever, John Barclay, as long as he lives. I know that too; I haven't been wrapped in pink cotton all these years, boy—I've lived my own life since you left my wing, and made my own way too, as far as that goes. And now you are trying to quench the fires of remorse in your soul because your wife died a victim of your selfish, ruthless, practical scheme of things. More than that, my son—more than that, your child is suffering all the agony that a woman can suffer because of your devilish system of traffic in blood for money. You know what I mean, John. That boy told the truth, as you admit, and he could either run or lie, and for being a man you have broken up a God-sent love merely to satisfy your own vanity. Oh, John—John," she cried passionately, "my poor, blind, foolish boy—haven't you found the ashes in the core of your faith yet—aren't you ready to quit?"

He began, "Don't you think, mother, I have suffered—"

"Suffered, boy? Suffered? Of course you have suffered, John," she answered, taking his hands in hers. "I have seen the furnace fires smoking your face, and I know you have suffered, Johnnie; that's why I am coming to you—to ask you to quit suffering. Look at it, my boy—what are you suffering for? Is it material power you want? Well, you have never had it. The people are going right along running their own affairs in spite of you. All your nicely built card houses are knocked over. In the states and in the federal government, in spite of your years of planning and piecing out your little practical system, at the very first puff of God's breath it goes to pieces. The men whom you bought and paid for don't stay bought—do they, my boy? Oh, your old mother knows, John. Men who will sell are never worth buying; and the house that relies on them, falls. You have built a sand dam, son—like the dams you used to build in the spring stream when you were a child. It melts under pressure like straw. You have no worldly power. In this practical world you are a failure, and good old Phil Ward, who went out into the field and scattered seeds of discontent at your system—he is seeing his harvest ripen in his old age, John," she cried. "Can't you see your failure? Look at it from a practical standpoint: what thing in the last thirty years have you advocated, and Philemon Ward opposed, that to-day he has not realized and you lost? His prescription for the evils may have been wrong many times, but his diagnosis of them was always right, and they are being cured, in spite of all your protest that they did not exist. Which of you has won his practical fight in this practical world—his God or your God; the ideal world or the material world, boy? Can't you see it?" The old woman leaned forward and looked in her son's dull, unresponsive face. "Can't you see how you have failed?" she pleaded.

They rose together and began to pace the long floor of the veranda. "Oh, mother," he cried, as he put his arm about her, "I am so lonely—so tired, so sick in the heart of me."

They didn't speak for a time, but walked together in silence. At length the mother began again. "John," she said, as they turned at the end of the porch, "I suppose you are saying that you have your money—that it is material—solid, substantial, and undeniable. But is it? Isn't it all a myth? Leave it where it is—in the shape of securities and stocks and credits—what will it do? Will it bring Jane back? Will it give Jeanette her heart's desire, and make her happy all her life? You know, dear, that it will only make me miserable. Has it made you happy, John? Turn it into gold and pile it up in the front yard—and what will it buy that poor Phil Ward has not had all of his life—good food, good clothing—good enough, at least—a happy family, useful children, and a good name? A good name, John, is rather to be chosen than great riches—than all your money, my son—rather to be chosen than all your money. Can you buy that with your millions piled on millions?"

They were walking slowly as she spoke, and they turned into the terrace. There they stood looking at the livid moon sinking behind the great house.

"Is there more joy in this house than in any other house in town, John—answer me squarely, son—answer me," she cried. He shook his head sadly and sighed. "A mother, whose heart bleeds every hour as she sees her son torturing himself with footless remorse; that is one. A heart-broken, motherless girl, whose lover has been torn away from her by her father's vanity and her own pride, and whose mother has been taken as a pawn in the game her father played with no motive, no benefit, nothing but to win his point in a miserable little game of politics; that is number two. And a man who should be young for twenty years yet, who should have been useful for thirty years—and now what is he? powerless, useless, wretched, lonely, who spends his time walking about fighting against God, that he may prove his own wisdom and nothing more."

"Mother," cried Barclay, petulantly, "I can't stand this—that you should turn on me—now." He broke away from her, and stood alone. "When I need you most, you reproach me. When I need sympathy, you scorn all that I have done. You can't prove your God. Why should I accept Him?"

The gaunt old woman stretched out her arms and cried: "Oh, John Barclay, prove your god. Tell him to come and give you a moment's happiness—set him to work to restore your good name; command him to make Jeanette happy. These things my God can do! Let your Mammon," she cried with all the passion of her soul, "let your Mammon come down and do one single miracle like that." Her voice broke and she sobbed. "What a tower of Babel—an industrial Babel, you are building, John—you and your kith and kind. The last century gave us Schopenhauers and Kants, all denying God, and this one gives us Railroad Kings and Iron Kings and Wheat Kings, all by their works proclaiming that Mammon has the power and the glory and the Kingdom. O ye workers of iniquity!" she cried, and her voice lifted, "ye wicked and perverse—"

She did not finish, but broken and trembling, her strength spent and her faith scorned, she sank on her knees by a marble urn on the terrace and sobbed and prayed. When she rose, the dawn was breaking, and she looked for a moment at her son, who had been sitting near her, and cried: "Oh, my boy, my little boy that I nursed at my breast—let Him in, He is your friend—and oh, my God, sustain my faith!"

Her son came to her side and led her into the house. But he went to his room and began the weary round, battling for his own faith.

As he stood by his open window that day at the mill, he saw Molly Brownwell across the pond, going into his home. He watched her idly and saw Jeanette meet her at the door, and then as his memory went back to the old days, he tried to find tears for the woman who had died, but he could only rack his soul. Tears were denied to him.

He was a rich man—was John Barclay; some people thought that, taking his wealth as wealth goes, all carefully invested in substantial things—in material things, let us say—he was the richest man in the Mississippi Valley. He bought a railroad that day when he looked through the office window at Molly Brownwell—a railroad three thousand miles long. And he bought a man's soul in a distant city—a man whom he did not know even by name, but the soul was thrown in "to boot" in a bargain; and he bought a woman's body whose face he had never seen, and that went as part of another trade he was making and he did not even know they had thrown it in. And he bought a child's life, and he bought a city's prosperity in another bargain, and bought the homage of a state, and the tribute of a European kingdom, as part of the day's huckstering. But with all his wealth and power, he could not buy one tear—not one little, miserable tear to moisten his grief-dried heart. For tears, just then, were a trifle high. So Mr. Barclay had to do without, though the man whose soul he bought wept, and the woman whose body came with a trade, sobbed, and the dead face of the child was stained with a score of tears.

They went to Jeanette Barclay's room,—the gray-haired woman and the girl,—and they sat there talking for a time—talking of things that were on their lips and not in their hearts. Each felt that the other understood her. And each felt that something was to be said. For one day before the end Jeanette's mother had said to her: "Jennie, if I am not here always go to Molly—ask her to tell you about her girlhood." The mother had rested for a while, and then added, "Tell her I said for you to ask her, and she'll know what I mean."

"Jeanette," said Molly Brownwell, "your mother and I were girls together. Your father saw more of her at our house than he did at her own home, until they married. Did you know that?" Jeanette nodded assent. "So one day last June she said to me, 'Molly, sometime I wish you would tell Jennie all about you and Bob.'"

Mrs. Brownwell paused, and Jeanette said, "Yes, mother told me to ask you to, Aunt Molly." Tears came into the daughter's eyes, and she added, "I think she knew even then that—"

And then it all came back, and after a while the elder woman was saying, "Well, once upon a time there lived a princess, my dear. All good stories begin so—don't they? She was a fat, pudgy little princess who longed to grow up and have hoop-skirts like a real sure-enough woman princess, and there came along a tall prince—the tallest, handsomest prince in all the wide world, I think. And he and the princess fell in love, as princesses and princes will, you know, my dear,—just as they do now, I am told. And the prince had to go away on business and be gone a long, long time, and while he was gone the father of the princess and the friend of the prince got into trouble—and the princess thought it was serious trouble. She thought the father of the prince would have to go to jail and maybe the prince and his friend fail. My, my, Jeanette, what a big word that word fail seemed to the little fat princess! So she let a man make love to her who could lend them all some money and keep the father out of jail and the prince and his friend from the awful fate of failure. So the man lent the money and made love, and made love. And the little princess had to listen; every one seemed to like to have her listen, so she listened and she listened, and she was a weak little princess. She knew she had wronged the prince by letting the man make love to her, and her soul was smudged and—oh, Jeanette, she was such a foolish, weak, miserable little princess, and they didn't tell her that there is only one prince for every princess, and one princess for every prince—so she took the man, and sent away the prince, and the man made love ever so beautifully—but it was not the real thing, my dear,—not the real thing. And afterwards when she saw the prince—so young and so strong and so handsome, her heart burned for him as with a flame, and she was not ashamed; the wicked, wicked princess, she didn't know. And so they walked together one night right up to the brink of the bad place, dearie—right up to the brink; and the princess shuddered back, and saved the prince. Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette, Jeanette," sobbed the woman, in the girl's arms, "right in this room, in this very room, which was your mother's room in the old house, I came out of the night, as bad a woman as God ever sent away from Him. And your mother and I cried it out, and talked it out, and I fought it out, and won. Oh, I won, Jeanette—I won!"

The two women were silent for a time, and then the elder went on: "That's what your mother wished you to know—that for every princess there is just one real prince, and for every prince there is just one real princess, my dear, and when you have found him, and know he is true, nothing—not money, not friends, not father nor mother—when he is honest, not even pride—should stand between you. That is what your mother sent you, dearie. Do you understand?"

"I think I do, Aunt Molly—I think so," repeated the girl. She looked out of the window for a moment, and then cried, "Oh, Aunt Molly—but I can't, I can't. How could he, Aunt Molly—how could he?" The girl buried her face in the woman's lap, and sobbed.

After a time the elder woman spoke. "You know he loves you, don't you, dear?"

The girl shook her head and cried, "But how could he?" and repeated it again and again.

"And you still love him—I know that, my dear, or you could not—you would not care, either," she added.

And so after a time the tears dried, as tears will, and the two women fell back into the pale world of surfaces, and as Molly Brownwell left she took the girl's hand and said: "You won't forget about the little pudgy princess—the dear, foolish, little weak princess, will you, Jeanette? And, dearie," she added as she stood on the lower steps of the porch, "don't—don't always be so proud—not about that, my dear—about everything else in the world, but not about that." And so she went back into the world, and ceased to be a fairy godmother, and took up her day's work.

John Barclay went to the City that night for the first time in two months, and Jeanette and her Grandmother Barclay kept the big house alone. In ten days he came back; his face was still hard, and the red rims around his eyes were dry, and his voice was sullen, as it had been for many weeks. His soul was still wrestling with a spirit that would not give up the fight. That night his daughter tried to sit with him, as she had tried many nights before. They sat looking at the stars in silence as was their wont. Generally the father had risen and walked away, but that night he turned upon her and said:—

"Jeanette, don't you like to be rich? I guess you are the richest girl in this country. Doesn't that sound good to you?"

"No, father," she answered simply, and continued, "What can I do with all that money?"

"Marry some man who's got sense enough to double it, and double it," cried Barclay, harshly. "Then there'll be no question but that you'll be the richest people in the world."

"And then what?" asked the girl.

"Then—then," he cried, "make the people in this world stand around—that's what."

"But, father," she said as she put her hand on his arm, "what if I don't want them to stand around? Why should I have to bother about it?"

"Oh," he groaned, "your grandmother has been filling you full of nonsense." He did not speak for a time, and at length she rose to go to bed. "Jeanette," he cried so suddenly that it startled her, "are you still moping after Neal Ward? Do you love him? Do you want me to go and get him for you?"

The girl stood by her father's chair a moment and then answered colourlessly: "No, father, I don't want you to get him for me. I am not moping for him, as you call it."

Her desolate tone reached some chord in his very heart, for he caught her hand, and put it to his cheek and said softly, "But she loves him—my poor little girl loves him?"

She tried to pull away her hand and replied, in the same dead voice: "Oh, well—that doesn't matter much, I suppose. It's all over—so far as I am concerned." She turned to leave him, and he cried:—

"My dear, my dear—why don't you go to him?"

She stopped a moment and looked at her father, and even in the starlight she could see his hard mouth and his ruthless jaw. Then she cried out, "Oh, father, I can't—I can't—" After a moment she turned and looked at him, and asked, "Would you? Would you?" and walked into the house without waiting for an answer.

The father sat crumpled up in his chair, listening to the flames crackling in his heart. The old negation was fighting for its own, and he was weary and broken and sick as with a palsy of the soul. For everything in him trembled. There was no solid ground under him. He had visited his material kingdom in the City, and had seen its strong fortresses and had tried all of its locks and doors, and found them firm and fast. But they did not satisfy his soul; something within him kept mocking them; refusing to be awed by their power, and the eternal "yes" rushed through his reason like a great wind.

As he sat there, suddenly, as from some power outside, John Barclay felt a creaking of his resisting timbers, and he quit the struggle. His heart was lead in his breast, and he walked through the house to his pipe organ, that had stood silent in the hall for nearly a year. He stood hesitatingly before it for a second, and then wearily lay him down to rest, on a couch beside it, where, when he had played the last time, Jane lay and listened. He was tired past all telling, but his soul was relaxed. He lay there for hours—until the tall clock above his head chimed two. He could not sleep, but his consciousness was inert and his mind seemed limp and empty, as one who has worked past his limit. The hymn that the clock chimed through the quarter hours repeated itself over and over again without meaning in his brain. Something aroused him; he started up suddenly, and lying half on his elbow and half on his side he stared about him, and was conscious of a great light in the room: it was as though there was a fire near by and he was alarmed, but he could not move. As he looked into space, terrified by the paralysis that held him, he saw across the face of the organ, "Righteousness exalteth a Nation, but sin is a reproach to any people."

Quick as a flash his mind went back to the time that same motto stared meaninglessly at him from above the pulpit in the chapel at West Point, to which he had been appointed official visitor at Commencement many years before. But that night as he gazed at the text its meaning came rushing through his brain. It came so quickly that he could not will it back nor reason it in. Righteousness, he knew, was not piety—not wearing your Sunday clothes to church and praying and singing psalms; it was living honestly and kindly and charitably and dealing decently with every one in every transaction; and sin—that, he knew—was the cheating, the deceiving, and the malicious greed that had built up his company and scores of others like it all over the land. That, he knew—that bribery and corruption and vicarious stealing which he had learned to know as business—that was a reproach to any people, and as it came to him that he was a miserable offender and that the other life, the decent life, was the right life, he was filled with a joy that he could not express, and he let the light fail about him unheeded, and lay for a time in a transport of happiness. He had found the secret.

The truth had come to him—to him first of all men, and it was his to tell. The joy of it—that he should find out what righteousness was—that it was not crying "Lord, Lord" and playing the hypocrite—thrilled him. And then the sense of his sinning came over him, but only with joy too, because he felt he could show others how foolish they were. The clock stopped ticking; the chimes were silent, and he lay unconscious of his body, with his spirit bathed in some new essence that he did not understand and did not try to understand. Finally he rose and went to his organ and turned on the motor, and put his hands to the keys. As he played the hymn to the "Evening Star," John Barclay looked up and saw his mother standing upon the stair with her fine old face bathed in tears. And then at last—

Tears? Tears for Mr. Barclay? All these months there have been no tears for him—none, except miserable little corroding tears of rage and shame. But now there are tears for Mr. Barclay, large, man's size, soul-healing tears—tears of repentance; not for the rich Mr. Barclay, the proud Mr. Barclay, the powerful, man-hating, God-defying Mr. Barclay of Sycamore Ridge, but for John Barclay, a contrite man, the humblest in all the kingdom.

And as John Barclay let his soul rise with the swelling music, he felt the solace of a great peace in his heart; he turned his wet face upward and cried, "Oh, mother, mother, I feel like a child!" Then Mary Barclay knew that her son had let Him in, knew in her own heart all the joy there is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.