admitted merely that "there were stories about, of course, - there always were stories when a man was smart enough to make some money quick!" But, unfortunately, he belonged to the category of unsuccessful, petty criminals, and he "had lost his nerve"!

He realized all this, and yet in the wreck which he had made of his life, he was indifferent to the world's injustice. What men thought or said about him had marvelously little importance just now. This crisis had wonderfully simplified life for him: he saw a few things which must be done, and to these he was setting himself with a slow will. His face held new, grave lines, which gave it a sort of manliness that it had not possessed before.

"You'd better see Graves before you leave, and get together on this thing," Wheeler remarked.

"I can't see any use in that," Jackson protested slowly. "I saw him yesterday and told him my views. He made me the treasurer of his company, and if they get me up and ask me questions,-why, I shall tell what I know about it. That's all there is to that!"

"Are you going to tell Helen the whole story, too?" the lawyer asked bluntly.

"Yes! That's why I'm going down there." Jackson felt his face burn with humiliation for the first time since he had begun his story.

"I suppose she'll have to know," Wheeler admitted softly. "It will cut her pretty deep."

He was wondering whether she could forgive this weak fellow, crawling back to her now, his courage gone, broken for life, as he judged. He suspected that she might pardon him, even though she had left him inexplicably. She would forgive her husband when he was at the end of his rope; she was made that way. For the moment, the softness of character in such women irritated him. There were other women whom he liked and admired less than her,— Mrs. Phillips was one, -who would not tolerate a flabby sinner like this man. But to Helen, disgrace would make

little difference. And he was sorry for it all, because he loved the woman, and he could feel her tragedy, though he was impervious to the man's.

"Women have bum luck sometimes," he reflected aloud. "They have to take all the man's troubles as well as their own." Then he added not unkindly. "You had better think well what it means to her and to the children before you do anything to make matters worse. I'll keep an eye on what goes on here, and let you know if you're needed, - if you can do any good."

Neither offered to shake hands, and Hart went out of the office without replying to the last remark. At the street entrance he hesitated a moment, as if to get his bearings, and then slowly walked down the crowded street in the direction of his office. The city sights were strangely foreign to him, as if he had come back to them after a long period of absence. The jostle of human beings on the pavement, the roar in the streets, were like the meaningless gyrations of a machine. With a repugnance that weighted his steps he turned in at the door of his building, and crowded into one of the cages that were swallowing and disgorging their human burdens in the mid-forenoon. In his office there had settled an air of listless idleness, now that Cook, the mainspring of the place, was no longer at his post. Without looking at the accumulated mail on his desk Hart called the stenographer, and dictated to her some instructions for his partner, Stewart, who had just landed in New York on his way home from a vacation in Europe. The girl received his dictation with an offish, impertinent glance in her eyes that said, "Something's wrong with this place, I guess!" When Hart had finished, she said,

-

"Say, Graves was in here twice this morning, and wanted me to let him know as soon as you came in. He wanted to know where you were. What shall I say to him?"

Hart thought a moment before reply

ing. He did not wish to see the contractor, that was very clear, and yet he was unwilling to seem to run away, to escape the man. Moreover, he realized vaguely a certain claim in complicity. There was trouble ahead for them both, surely, and Graves had his right to be considered.

"If Mr. Graves calls, bring him in here," he said to the stenographer, and turned to his mail.

He had some final matters to attend to, and then he should take the train. If the contractor came back before he got off, he would see him. Half an hour later, while he was still tearing open his letters and jotting notes for the answers, his door opened and Graves walked in. He had less assurance than on the afternoon before. The strain was beginning to tell even on his coarse fibre.

"So you've come to!" he exclaimed with an attempt to be at his ease, taking a chair beside the desk.

Hall quiet." Now the man had outwitted him and put his money beyond his reach. "So you've seen Mr. Wheeler?"

'Just come from there."

"He told you he'd help us out of this hole?"

"We did n't discuss it."

"I've seen to Van Meyer myself. He's where he can't do no harm. And I guess it's all right over there," he pointed with his thumb in the direction of the city hall,-"though it'll cost a sight of money if those fellers lose their jobs! Now, if we keep quiet, they can't do nothing but bring their suits for damages. I ain't afraid of that!"

"I suppose not," Hart replied dryly. "It does n't touch you. They're all straw names but mine, aren't they?"

"Just now, there's this damned coroner,

Graves went on, ignoring the last remark. "The inquest begins to-morrow. He'll try to fix the blame, of course, and

"Say, did you see the papers this morning?" Graves asked, ignoring the ques

tion.

Hart shook his head; he had no curiosity to know what the newspapers were saying.

"They're making an awful kick! It's mostly politics, of course. They've got the mayor on the run. He's suspended the head of the department. Bloom was a good friend of mine. That'll scare the rest considerable. And then there's talk of bringing civil suits against the hotel company, and the officers individually."

He paused to see what impression this news might make on the architect.

"They can't get much out of me!" Hart answered quietly. "I turned over to Wheeler pretty nearly every dollar I have got. That's on account of the school business," he added, thinking the contractor would not comprehend rightly his meaning.

Graves stared at him in disgust. He had some idea of getting the architect to pay part of the expense of "keeping the City

"I

suppose so," Hart assented wearily. "But they've got nothing to go on, if you only hold your tongue," Graves ripped out incautiously. "And you' got to hold your jaw!"

The man's dictatorial manner angered the architect. He rose hastily from his desk, gathering some papers and putting them into his bag.

"I told you yesterday, Graves, that I would have nothing more to do with you in this Glenmore business. I don't see what you came in here for. Let them go ahead and do what they can. I'll stand for my share of the trouble.”

"You"-Graves burst out. “You”"I've got an engagement, Mr. Graves, and there's no use in our talking this matter over any more.

He reached for his coat and hat.

"But I tell you, Hart, that you can't be a quitter in this business. Did n't your cousin tell you that, too?"

"It makes no difference what he might say," Hart retorted doggedly, holding open the door into the hall.

me up this dirty way!"

The contractor crossed the room to where Hart stood, as if he meant to strike then and there. Hart looked at him indifferently. The man disgusted and irritated him: he wondered how he could ever have submitted himself to him. He held the door open, and the contractor passed out into the hall, which was empty.

build up my business with nothing back of me to start on!"

The architect realized that Graves was making an appeal to his sympathies, and although this confession of weakness roused his contempt, he began to see more dispassionately the contractor's point of view. The man was fighting for his life, and there could be nothing rea

"All right!" the architect muttered. "I guess that won't matter much now." Graves kept by his side in the elevator, and followed him out into the street.

"Say! Step over to Burke's place with me," he urged in a more conciliatory tone. "See here!" the architect answered, stopping on the sidewalk. "It's no use talking. I've done with you and your methods. Can't you see that? I don't intend to get you into trouble if I can help it. But I don't mean to sneak out of this or tell any lies to save your hide. I'm on my way out of the city now, to see my family, and shall be away for a few days. Wheeler knows where I shall be, and he'll let me know when I am wanted. They won't get around to me for some little time yet, probably. If they summon me, why, I suppose I shall come back!" The contractor, hearing that Hart was about to leave the city, felt relieved. It would be easier to deal with his cousin, the lawyer, who might be able to keep the architect from making a fool of himself. So he walked on with Hart toward the station in a calmer frame of mind. As if he realized the mistake he had made in trying to bully his accomplice, he began to put forward his personal difficulties apologetically.

"This fire has hit me hard. Of course the Glenmore will be a dead loss, and the banks have begun to call my loans. Then it'll take a lot of ready money to keep those fellers over there quiet. I was just getting where I could n't be touched when this fire came, and now I shall have to begin over pretty nearly. You don't know,

make a bad matter worse. No speaking out now could save those hapless victims of greed, who had lost their lives in the wretched building.

"I don't want to ruin my family no more than you do, Mr. Hart," the contractor persisted. "And you can't make me so much trouble as you will yourself. You can see that!" he added meaningly. Hart turned on the man angrily.

"I have heard about enough, Graves! It's no use your going on. I tell you I mean to come back, and stand my share of the trouble, if it breaks me! Do you hear? If it breaks me! Now good-day."

yes,

The contractor turned away, scowling, like a dog that had been kicked into the street. Hart hurried into the station and bought his ticket. He had not looked up his eastern connections, remembering merely that Helen had left Chicago by this road, and he took the first train east in his overwhelming desire to get to her, to tell her all, to submit. . . . As the heavy train moved slowly out of the station, he felt strangely relieved from the perplexities of the morning. The unconscious physical influence of mere motion, of going somewhere, soothed his irritated nerves.

He had been goaded into his final declaration to the contractor, for he had felt the ground slipping from his resolution under the persistent appeals of the man. But as the train shot out into the prairie he turned the thing over in his mind with all its varying aspects. Could he come back, as he had said, and bring on himself and his family the shame and disgrace of public exposure? He comforted himself

The old Jackson homestead at Vernon Falls was a high, narrow, colonial house with three gables. Upon the broad terrace facing the south side there was a row of graceful, “wineglass "elms. Below the terrace reached a broad, level meadow, which was marked irregularly by a dark line where a little brook wandered, and beyond the meadow passed the white road to Verulam, the nearest station. From this highway a lane led through copses of alder and birch along the east side of the meadow to the old house, which was withdrawn nearly an eighth of a mile from the public road.

It was an austere, silent, lonely place. Powers Jackson during the last years of his life had built a great barn and sheds behind the house with the purpose of making a stock farm, but since his death these had been shut up. He had also built a broad veranda on the terrace along the south side, which contrasted strangely with the weather-beaten, hand-made clapboards of the old building. The gaunt, lofty house seemed to be drawing away from the frivolous addition at its base.

Hart had often spent his long vacations at the farm with his mother when he was at college. Yet that April afternoon, when he came upon it from the bend in the Verulam road, it seemed to him strange and unreal. His memories of the house and the meadow in front of it had grown and flowered, until in his imagination it was a spot of tender, aristocratic grace, a harmony of swaying elm branches and turfy

lawn, lichened stone walls and marvelous gray clapboards. To-day it rose bare and severe across the brown meadow, unrelieved by the leafless branches of the elms that crisscrossed the south front. The slanting sun struck the little panes of the upper windows, and made them blaze with a mysterious, intensely yellow fire. Involuntarily his pace slackened as he turned from the highroad into the lane. The place appeared silent, deserted. Was Helen there in the old house? Could she understand? Could she forgive him? ...

The northern spring had barely begun. It was cold, grudging, tentative, scarcely touching the brown meadow with faint green. Hiding its charm, like the delicate first beauty of Puritan women, it gave an uncertain promise of future performance, of a hidden, reticent beauty!

The architect lingered in the lane, watching the sun fade from the windows of the house, until the air suddenly became chill and the scene was blank. Then, as he stepped on toward the house, he caught sight of a woman's figure stooping in the thicket beside the road. His heart began suddenly to beat, telling him, almost before his eyes had recognized the bent figure, that this was his wife. She looked up at last, and seeing him coming toward her, rose and stood there, her hands filled with tendrils of some plant that she had been plucking up by its roots, her face troubled and disturbed.

"Nell!" he called as he came nearer, "Nell!" And then he stopped, baffled. For long hours on the train he had thought what he should say when he met her, but now his premeditated words seemed to him futile. He saw the gulf that might lie between them forever. He looked into her troubled face. She was wonderfully, newly beautiful! Her hair was parted in the middle, and rippled loosely over the temples to the ears, in the way she had worn it as a girl, a fashion which he had laughed her out of. She had grown larger, ampler, and in her linen dress, with its flat collar revealing the white neck, without ornament of any sort, her features

came out strong and distinct. That curve of the upper lip, which had always made the face appealing, no longer trembled at the touch of emotion. There was a repression and mature self-command about her, as if, having been driven back upon her own heart, she had recovered possession of herself once more, and no longer belonged to a man. She was beautiful, wholly woman, and yet to the husband waiting there she was his no longer!

"Nell," he began once more, still waiting at a little distance from her, “I have come here to you, as you said."

Her arms hung limply at her sides, with the trailing plant drooping across her skirt, as though, thus taken by surprise, she were waiting for him to declare himself. He stepped nearer quickly, moved by a terrible fear that, after all, it was too late, that she had passed beyond his reach.

"You know what I mean! I have come to tell you that you were right when you went away. You were right all along, and I have been wrong!"

But as he spoke she reached out her arms to him, beseeching him, drawing him to her, in commiseration for him. She put her arms on his shoulders, clasping them behind his neck, thus drawing him and holding him from her at the same time. Her lips trembled, and her breath fluttered as she looked into his eyes. . . . "Francis! Francis!" she murmured, holding him as he tried to take her in his

he's come!" and together they went on to the house.

Mrs. Spellman received her son-in-law in her equable, unknowing manner, as if she had expected him to arrive on that day. After supper husband and wife sat in the west parlor, which the architect remembered just as it was this day, with the same faded drab carpet, the brass fireirons, and worn furniture. The highbacked walnut writing-table stood in the same corner beside the window. Outside, a drooping elm branch swept softly across the glass pane. Nothing here was altered, nothing added, save the new lives of the modern generation. When Mrs. Spellman had taken the boys away to bed, Jackson turned to his wife:

"Now I must tell you the whole story, Nell!"

"Yes," she answered.

-

And he began slowly to tell her the story as he had lived through it that night when he lay exhausted on the earth beneath the stars, the story of his work in the city, of the acts which for eight years he had hidden from all, even himself. He explained as well as he could the tangled web of his dealings with the contractor from the day when he had met him in the Canostota until the time of the arrangement over the school and the hotel. When he came to the end, to the horrible fire which had licked up the fraudulent Glenmore before his own eyes, tears fell upon his hands, which his wife held tightly in hers, and he could feel her body tremble against his.

"And that was the end! It made me know what it all meant! Of course, those men and women might have been caught anyway, no matter how well the building was put up, there's no telling,

and Graves would have done the same job whether I had been in with him or not. Still, that does n't count. When I saw them there, trapped, fighting helplessly for their lives, I felt as if I had stood by and let them be murdered, and made money by it, too!”

The horror of those minutes revived as