Dave Cowan went down the ridge to the road, disregarding his gypsy friends. He trod the earth with a ruffling bravado. The Wilbur twin lingered as far behind as he dared, loitering provocatively in the sight of the child stealers. If they meant to do anything about it now was their chance. But no violence was offered him, and presently, far beyond the camp where the fire still burned, he was forced to conclude that they could not mean to carry him off. Certainly they were neglecting a prize who had persistently flaunted himself at them. They notably lacked enterprise.

Down over the grassy slope of West Hill they went, the boy still well in the rear; you never could tell what might happen; and so came to Fair Street across shadows that lay long to the east. Newbern was still slumberous. Smoke issued from a chimney here and there, but mostly the town would partake of a cold supper. The boy came beside his father, with Frank, the dog, again on his leash of frayed rope. Dave Cowan was reciting to himself:

Then he became conscious of the silent boy at his side, stepping noiselessly with bare feet.

"Life is funny," said Dave.

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"Of course there's a catch in it somewhere."

"Yes, sir."

"That old girl back there, that old maid, she'll have to small-town it all her life. I feel sorry for her, I do."

"Yes, sir."

But the sorrowing father now began to whistle cheerfully. His grief had not overborne him. A man who would call Judge Penniman Old Flapdoodle and question the worth of Matthew Arnold's acquaintance was not to be long downcast at the plight of one woman. And he had done what man could for her.

They came to River Street, the street of shops, deserted and sleeping back of drawn curtains. Only the shop of Solly Gumble seemed to be open for trade. This was but seeming, however, for another establishment near by, though sealed and curtained as to front, suffered its rear portal to yawn most hospitably. This was the place of business of Herman Vielhaber, and its street sign concisely said, "Lager Bier Saloon."

Dave Cowan turned into the alley just beyond Solly Gumble's, then up another alley that led back of the closed shops, and so came to the back door of this refectory. It stood open, and from the cool and shadowy interior came a sourish smell of malt liquors and the hum of voices. They entered and were in Herman Vielhaber's pleasant back room, with sanded floor and a few round tables, at which sat half a dozen men consuming beer from stone mugs or the pale wine of Herman's country from tall glasses.

Herman was a law-abiding citizen. Out of deference to a sacred and long-established American custom he sealed the front of his saloon on the Sabbath; out of deference to another American custom, equally long established, equally sacred, he received his Sabbath clientÈle at the rear—except for a brief morning interval when he and Minna, his wife, attended service at the Lutheran church. Herman's perhaps not too subtle mind had never solved this problem of American morals—why his beverages should be seemly to drink on all days of the week, yet on one of them seemly but if taken behind shut doors and shielding curtains. But he adhered conscientiously to the American rule. His Lutheran pastor had once, in an effort to clear up the puzzle, explained to him that the Continental Sunday would never do at all in this land of his choice; but it left Herman still muddled, because fixed unalterably in his mind was a conviction that the Continental Sunday was the best of all Sundays. Nor was there anything the least clandestine in this backdoor trade of Herman's on the Sabbath. One had but to know the path to his door, and at this moment Newbern's mayor, old Doctor Purdy, sat at one of Herman's tables and sipped from a stone mug of beer and played a game of pinochle with stout, red-bearded Herman himself, overlooked by Minna, who had brought them their drink.

This was another thing about Herman's place that Newbern understood in time. When he had begun business some dozen years before, and it was known that Minna came downstairs from their living rooms above the saloon and helped to serve his patrons, the scandal was high. It was supposed that only a woman without character could, for any purpose whatever, enter a saloon. But Herman had made it plain that into the sort of saloon he conducted any woman, however exalted, could freely enter. If they chose not to, that was their affair. And Minna had in time recovered a reputation so nearly lost at first news of her service here.

Herman, indeed, ran a place of distinction, or at least of tone. He did sell the stronger drinks, it is true, but he sold them judiciously, and much preferred to sell the milder ones. He knew his patrons, and would stubbornly not sell drink, even beer or wine, to one he suspected of abusing the stuff. As for rowdyism, it was known far and wide about Newbern that if you wanted to get thrown out of Herman's quick you had only to start some rough stuff, or even talk raw. It was said he juggled you out the door like you were an empty beer keg. Down by the riverside was another saloon for that sort of thing, kept by Pegleg McCarron, who would sell whisky to any one that could buy, liked rough stuff and with his crutch would participate in it.

When Herman decided that a customer was spending too much money for drink, that customer had to go to Pegleg's if he bought more. And now the mayor at the little table connived at a flagrant breach of the law he had sworn to uphold, quaffing beer from his mug and melding a hundred aces as casually as if it were a week-day.

The other men at the little tables were also of the substantial citizenry of Newbern, including the postmaster, the editor of the Advance, and Rapp, Senior, of Rapp Brothers, Jewellery. The last two were arguing politics and the country's welfare. Rapp, Senior, believed and said that the country was going to the dogs, because the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. The editor of the Advance disputed this, and the postmaster intervened to ask if Rapp, Senior, had seen what our exports of wheat and cotton were lately. Rapp, Senior, said he didn't care anything about that—it was the interests he was down on. Herman Vielhaber, melding eighty kings, said it was a good rich-man's country, but also a good poor-man's country, because where could you find one half as good—not in all Europe—and he now laid down forty jacks, which he huskily called "yacks."

Dave Cowan greeted the company and seated himself at a vacant table.

"Pull up a chair, Buzzer, and we'll drink to the life force—old electricity or something."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, and seated himself.

Minna left the pinochle game to attend upon them. She was plump and pink-faced, with thick yellow hair neatly done. A broad white apron protected her dress of light blue.

"A stein of Pilsener, Minna," said Dave, "and for the boy, let's see. How would you like, a nice cold bottle of pop, Doctor?"

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "Strawberry pop."

Herman looked up from his game, though in the midst of warm utterance in his native tongue at the immediate perverse fall of the cards.

"I guess you git the young one a big glass milk, mamma—yes? Better than pop for young ones. Pop is belly wash."

"Yes, ma'am," said Wilbur to Minna, though he would have preferred the pop by reason of its colour and its vivacious prickling; and you could have milk at home.

"And I tell you, Minna," said Dave. "Bread and butter and cheese, lots of it, rye bread and pumpernickel and Schweitzerkase and some pickles and radishes, nicht wahr?"

"Yes," said Minna, "all!" and moved on to the bar. But Dave detained her.

"Minna!"

She stopped and turned back to him.

"You will?"

"Sprechen sie Deutsch, Minna?"

"Ja—yes—why not? I should think I do. I always could. Why couldn't I?"

She went on her mission, grumbling pettishly. Why shouldn't she speak her own language? What did the man think? He must be a joker!

"Mamma!" Herman called again. "Git also the young one some that apfel kuchen. You make it awful good."

"Yes," called Minna from the bar. "I git it. For why wouldn't I speak my own language, I like to know?"

Dave Cowan's jest was smouldering faintly within her. She returned presently with the stein of beer and a glass of milk, and went, still muttering, for the food that had been commanded. She returned with this, setting bread and butter and cheese before them, and a blue plate whose extensive area was all but covered with apple cake, but now she no longer muttered in bewilderment. She confronted the jester, hands upon hips, her doll eyes shining with triumph.

"Hah! Now, mister, I ask you something good like you ask me. You git ready! Sprechen sie English?"

Dave Cowan affected to be overcome with confusion, while Minna laughed loud and long at her sally. Herman laughed with her, his head back and huge red beard lifted from his chest.

"She got you that time, mister!" he called to Dave. "Mamma's a bright one, give her a minute so she gits herself on the spot!"

"Ja! Sprechen sie English?" taunted Minna again, for a second relish of her repartee. Effusively, in her triumph, she patted the cheek of the Wilbur twin. "Ja! I could easy enough give your poppa as good like he sent, yes? Sprechen sie English, nicht wahr?"

Again her bulk trembled with honest mirth, and while this endured she went to the ice box and brought a bone for Frank, the dog. Frank fell upon it with noisy gurgles.

Dave Cowan affected further confusion at each repetition of Minna's stinging retort; acted it so convincingly that the victor at length relented and brought a plate of cookies to the table.

"I show you who is it should be foolish in the head!" she told him triumphantly.

"You got me, Minna—I admit it."

The victim pretended to be downcast, and ate his bread and cheese dejectedly. Minna went to another table to tell over the choice bit.

The Wilbur twin ate bread and cheese and looked with interest about the room. The tables and woodwork were dark, the walls and ceiling also low in tone. But there were some fine decorative notes that stood brightly out. On one wall was a lovely gold-framed picture in which a young woman of great beauty held back a sumptuous curtain revealing a castle on the Rhine set above a sunny terrace of grapevines. On the opposite wall was a richly coloured picture of a superb brewery. It was many stories in height; smoke issued from its chimneys, and before it stood a large truck to which were hitched two splendid horses. The truck was being loaded with the brewery's enlivening product. The brewery was red, the truck yellow, the horses gray, and the workmen were clad in blue, and above all was a flawless sky of blue. It was a spirited picture, and the Wilbur twin was instantly enamoured of it. He wished he might have seen this yesterday, when he was rich. Maybe Mr. Vielhaber would have sold it. He thought regretfully of Winona's delight at receiving the beautiful thing to hang on the wall of the parlour, a fit companion piece to the lion picture. But he had spent his money, and this lovely thing could never be Winona's.

Discussion of world affairs still went forward between Rapp, Senior, and the Advance editor. Even in that day the cost of living was said to be excessive, and Rapp, Senior, though accounting for its rise by the iniquity of the interests, submitted that the cost of women's finery was what kept the world poor.

"It's women's tomfool dressing keeps us all down. Look what they pay for their silks and satins and kickshaws and silly furbelows! That's where the bulk of our money goes: bonnets and high-heeled slippers and fancy cloaks. Take the money spent for women's foolish truck and see what you'd have!" Rapp, Senior, gazed about him, looking for contradiction.

"He's right," said Dave Cowan. "He's got the truth of it. But, my Lord! Did you ever think what women would be without all that stuff? Look what it does for 'em! Would you have 'em look like us? Would you have a beautiful woman wear a cheap suit of clothes like Rapp's got on, and a hat bought two years ago? Not in a thousand years! We dress 'em up that way because we like 'em that way."

Rapp, Senior, dusted the lapel of his coat, tugged at his waistcoat to straighten it, and closely regarded a hat that he had supposed beyond criticism.

"That's all right," he said, "but look where it gets us!"

Presently the discussion ended—Rapp, Senior, still on the note of pessimism and in the fell clutch of the interests—for the debaters must go blamelessly home to their suppers. Only the mayor remained at his game with Herman, his gray, shaven old face bent above his cards while he muttered at them resentfully. Dave Cowan ate his bread and cheese with relish and invoked another stein of beer from Minna, who vindictively flung her jest at him again as she brought it.

The Wilbur twin had eaten his apple cake and was now eating the cookies, taking care to drop no crumbs on the sanded floor. After many cookies dusk fell and he heard the church bells ring for evening worship. But no one heeded them. The game drew to an excited finish, while Dave Cowan, his pipe lighted, mused absently and from time to time quoted bits of verse softly to himself:

The game ended with an explosion of rage from the mayor. The cards had continued perverse for him. He pushed his soft black hat back from his rumpled crest of gray hair and commanded Minna Vielhaber to break a municipal ordinance which had received his official sanction. Herman cheerily combed his red beard and scoffed at his late opponent.

"It makes dark," Minna reminded him. "You should have light."

Herman lighted two lamps suspended above the tables. Then he addressed the Wilbur twin, now skillfully prolonging the last of his cookies.

"Well, young one, you like your bread and cheese and milk and cookies and apfel kuchen, so? Well, I tell you—come here. I show you something fine."

He went to the front room, where the bar was, and the Wilbur twin expectantly followed. He had learned that these good people produced all manner of delights. But this was nothing to eat. The light from the lamps shone over the partition between back room and front, and there in a spacious cage beside the wall was a monkey, a small, sad-eyed creature with an aged, wrinkled face all but human. He crouched in a corner and had been piling wisps of straw upon his reverend head.

"Gee, gosh!" exclaimed the Wilbur twin, for he had expected nothing so rare as this.

The monkey at sight of Herman became animated, leaping again and again the length of the cage and thrusting between its bars a hairy forearm and a little, pinkish, human hand.

"You like him, hey?" said Herman.

"Gee, gosh!" again exclaimed the Wilbur twin in sheer delight.

"It's Emil his name is," said Herman. "You want out, Emil, hey?"

He unclasped the catch of a door, and Emil leaped to the crook of his arm, where he nestled, one hand securely grasping a fold of Herman's beard.

"Ouch, now, don't pull them whiskers!" warned Herman. "See how he knows his good friend! But he shake hands like a gentleman. Emil, shake hands nicely with this young one." The monkey timidly extended a paw and the entranced Wilbur shook it. "Come," said Herman. "I let you give him something."

They went to the back room, Emil still stoutly grasping the beard of his protector.

"Now," said Herman, "you give him a nice fat banana. Mamma, give the young one a banana to give to Emil."

The banana was brought and the Wilbur twin cautiously extended it. Emil, at sight of the fruit, chattered madly and tried to leap for it. He appeared to believe that this strange being meant to deprive him of it. He snatched it when it was thrust nearer, still regarding the boy with dark suspicion. Then he deftly peeled the fruit and hurriedly ate it, as if one could not be—with strangers about—too sure of one's supper.

The monkey moved Dave Cowan to lecture again upon the mysteries of organic evolution.

"About three hundred million years difference between those two," he said, indicating Herman and his pet with a wave of the calabash. "And it's no good asking whether it's worth while, because we have to go on and on. That little beast is your second cousin, Herman."

"I got a Cousin Emil in the old country," said Minna, "but he ain't lookin' like this last time I seen him. I guess you're foolish in the head again."

"He came out of the forest and learned to stand up, to walk without using his hands, and he got a thumb, and pretty soon he was able to be a small-town mayor or run a nice decent saloon and argue about politics."

"Hah, that's a good one!" said Herman. "You hear what he says, Emil?"

The beast looked up from his banana, regarding them from eyes unutterably sad.

"See?" said Dave. "That's the life force, and for a minute it's conscious that it's only a monkey."

They became silent under Emil's gaze of acute pathos—human life aware of its present frustration. Then suddenly Emil became once more an animated and hungry monkey with no care but for his food.

"There," said Dave. "I ask you, isn't that the way we do? Don't we stop to think sometimes and get way down, and then don't we feel hungry and forget it all and go to eating?"

"Sure, Emil is sensible just like us," said Minna.

"But there's some catch about the whole thing," said Dave. "Say, Doc, what do you think life is, anyway?"

Purdy scanned the monkey with shrewd eyes, and grinned.

"I only know what it is physiologically," he said. "Physiologically, life is a constant force rhythmically overcoming a constant resistance."

"Pretty good," said Dave, treasuring the phrase. "The catch must be right there—it always does overcome the constant resistance."

"When it can't in one plant," said Purdy, "it dismantles it and builds another, making improvements from time to time."

"Think what it's had to do," said Dave, "to build Herman from a simple, unimproved plant like Emil! Herman's a great improvement on Emil."

"My Herman has got a soul," said Minna, stoutly—"monkeys ain't."

Dave Cowan and Purdy exchanged a tolerant smile. They were above arguing that outworn thesis. Dave turned to his son.

"Anyway, Buzzer, if you ever get discouraged, remember we were all like that once, and cheer up. Remember your ancestry goes straight back to one of those, and still back of that—"

"To the single cell of protoplasm," said Purdy.

"Beyond that," said Dave, "to star dust."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"Foolish in the head," said Minna. "You think you know things better than the reverent what preaches at the Lutheran church! He could easy enough tell you what you come from. My family was in Bavaria more than two hundred years, and was not any monkeys."

"Maybe Emil he got a soul, too, like a human," remarked Herman.

"You bet he has," said Dave Cowan, firmly—"just like a human."

"You put him to bed," directed Minna. "He listen to such talk and go foolish also in the head."

The Wilbur twin watched Emil put to bed, then followed his father out into the quiet, starlit streets. He was living over again an eventful afternoon. They reached the Penniman porch without further talk. Dave Cowan sat with his guitar in the judge's chair and lazily sounded chords and little fragments of melody. After a time the Pennimans and the Merle twin came from church. The Wilbur twin excitedly sought Winona, having much to tell her. He drew her beside him into the hammock, and was too eager for more than a moment's dismay when she discovered his bare feet, though he had meant to put on shoes and stockings again before she saw him.

"Barefooted on Sunday!" said Winona in tones of prim horror.

"It was so hot," he pleaded; "but listen," and he rushed headlong into his narrative.

His father knew gypsies, and had been to Chicago and Omaha and—and Cadiz and Cameroon—and he was sorry for Miss Juliana Whipple because she was a small-towner and no one had ever kissed her since her mother died; and if ever gypsies did carry him off he didn't want any one to worry about him or try to get him back; and the Vielhabers were very nice people that kept a nice saloon; and Mrs. Vielhaber had given him lots of apple cake that was almost like an apple pie, but without any top on it; and they had a lovely picture that would look well beside the lion picture, but it would probably cost too much money; and they had a monkey, a German monkey, that was just like a little old man; and once, thousands of years ago, when the Bible was going on, we were all monkeys and lived in trees, but a constant force made us stand and walk like people.

To Winona this was a shocking narrative, and she wished to tell Dave Cowan that he was having a wretched influence upon the boy, but Dave was now singing "In the Gloaming," and she knew he would merely call her Madame la Marquise, the toast of all the court, or something else unsuitable to a Sabbath evening. She tried to convey to the Wilbur twin that sitting in a low drinking saloon at any time was an evil thing.

"Anyway," said he, protestingly, "you say I should always learn something, and I learned about us coming up from the monkeys."

"Why, Wilbur Cowan! How awful! Have you forgotten everything you ever learned at Sunday-school?"

"But I saw the monkey," he persisted, "and my father said so, and Doctor Purdy said so."

Winona considered.

"Even so," she warned him, "even if we did come up from the lower orders, the less said about it the better."

He had regarded his putative descent without prejudice; he was sorry that Winona should find scandal in it.

"Well," he remarked to relieve her, "anyway, there's some catch in it. My father said so."