first sergeant was old Jeremiah Wilson, and the prisoner, standing to
the "front and center" in the gathering dusk, and hearing his fate
pronounced, was Jeremiah's son.

Sergeant Wilson was the one man in the squadron who had hoped against
hope, and now that hope was dead. It died hard, and its death was
recorded in that contraction of the knees and dig of the spurs. The
guidon paid no attention. In his heart he believed that the sentence was
just; but his pity went out to the old soldier on his right. His eyes,
however, were fixed on Private Wilson, as were those of the rest of the
squadron. The prisoner had acquired a new status. Here was a human being
within two weeks of the solution of the greatest of all mysteries. He
was worth looking at. The condemned man saw the interest shown in him,
and, upheld by the feeling of self-importance inherent in the negro
character, and always brought to the surface by applause or other
manifestation of unusual attention, bore himself jauntily.

There was nothing of this to sustain his old father. He had participated
in executions before. For him there were no visions of walking to death
with a "firm tread," as the papers say, and "dying game" before the
admiring eyes of soldiers and natives. With him it was steel-ribbed
facts. He could hear the bang of the trap, the snap of the rope, and the
quivering creak of the scaffold. And afterward, the lonely, hopeless
years. Besides, the dishonor of it. What irony to parade with thirty
years of service chevrons on his sleeves, and be pointed out as the
father of a man hanged for deserting to the Filipinos!

The officers went to the front and center and the formation was over.
Private Wilson departed to his closely guarded prison, and old Jeremiah
took the troop to quarters and dismissed it. For the first time in
twenty years he forgot to "open chamber and magazine," and publish the
details for the next day. He wanted to be alone; away from the pitying
eyes of the black men of the troop.

He had honestly believed that there were grounds for hope. He could not
see now, in the face of the evidence, how the court could have given
"Buff" the extreme penalty. He thought he had explained the
circumstances so clearly. Hadn't he told the tribunal of the baleful
influence of Mercedes Martinez? how this _mestiza_, had lured his boy to
his downfall? He thought he had shown positively, by his testimony,
that this woman had terrible "voodoo" powers and had _conjured_ "Buff."
Hadn't they apparently listened with wonder while he related the charms
that had been brought to bear on his son? the devils that had pursued
him; the angels that had beckoned him away to the hills; the divine call
he had received to be the George Washington of the Filipinos, and lead
them to freedom?

[Illustration: "ALL DAY LONG OLD SERGEANT WILSON SAT IN THE CORNER OF
THE SQUAD ROOM, CLASPING AND UNCLASPING HIS STRAINING HANDS"]

The old soldier's pride in his son's physical perfection had always
blinded him to the fact that the private was constantly in trouble, and
was known as a "bad egg." If any one had told him that he was an object
of pity because of his boy's worthlessness, he would have sputtered with
indignation. He never realized that Buff escaped many a "bawling out"
because the officers respected the father's long years of faithful
service and did not want to humiliate him. He knew that his boy flew
high occasionally, but that was because he was "jess nachally sprightly
and full o' devilment." No one could deny that Private Wilson was one of
the finest animals, physically, that ever wore the uniform; or that he
had gained a wide reputation among his comrades and the Filipinos on
account of his terrible abilities in a hand-to-hand engagement. It was
this very notoriety that had attracted the insurgents' attention to him,
and led to his downfall.

[Illustration: "CABLE THE PRESIDENT! WHAT A JOKE!"]

The little brown men stood in awe of this black demon, and wanted him on
their side. His military training and reputation as a fighter would be
of inestimable value. With their usual craft the insurgent officials
went about to wean the soldier from his allegiance, and by the aid of
the _mestiza_ beauty, Mercedes Martinez, succeeded in their purpose.
Between retreat and reveille of one July night, Private Wilson, led by
visions of love and a brigadier-general's star, took to the hills. He
longed to emulate the black renegade, Fagan, but having none of Fagan's
"foxiness" or ability, he was soon laid by the heels. Men of his own
squadron took him. He demanded at first to be treated as befitted his
rank; but none of his self-importance went with his black captors.
"We'll brigidiale-gene'al yer, yer black scound'al," they remarked
cheerfully, as they stripped off his tinsel stars. "Yer oughter be
lynched."

They "Gen'al Wilsoned" him until he was sick of it and begged them to
stop. Then, when they got back to the station, they popped him into the
"jigger" along with privates charged with sassing the cook and other
heinous offenses--a most humiliating experience for a brigadier general.
Now he must die; and it came to him that it was as hard for a general
officer to die as ever it was for a private.

[Illustration: "THE CIRCLE CLOSED IN AS THE SEA SURGES UP UPON THE
LAND"]

When his son had disappeared, old Sergeant Wilson had borne himself
proudly, even in the face of rumors and insinuations. His boy would not
desert. That he might have gone outside the lines to see some "lady
friend" and been captured, yes; but no desertion. Even when tales of his
lurid doings out in the province began to come in, old Jeremiah had not
faltered in his faith. They were lies, all of them, or it was some other
man. Nor when Buff was taken, with his patent-leather boots and tin
stars, was the old man shaken; for the explanation that the private gave
as to how he had been conjured was easier for Wilson to believe than
that his "baby" had been false to his salt. But now the case was
different. The disgrace of being parent to a "bobtailed" and condemned
criminal was as the bitterness of death.

Up to now, for all his hard sixty years of life, he had carried himself
like a lance. The whiteness of age in his woolly hair was not reflected
in the iron spirit that upheld his wrinkled body. But the shame of those
words spoken on parade had undone that, as suddenly as ashes crumble
before the touch.

The days immediately following the publishing of Buff's sentence were
nightmares of pain and humiliation. The old negro could hardly bring
himself to go to headquarters at first sergeant's call. When he did go,
he moved heavily, like a man asleep, and with his eyes fixed on the
ground, that he might not meet the curious, pitying glances of his
fellow soldiers.

After a week of this, old Jeremiah began to make mistakes at drill and
mistakes in his troop papers; a thing hitherto unknown. Finally
Lieutenant Perkins, the troop commander, lost his patience at some bull
the old sergeant made, and called him down roughly, in the presence of
the troop.

"Look here, Sergeant Wilson, I won't have any more of this. I'll bust
you higher than a kite. I don't care if you've had fifty years of
service. If you are mooning about that worthless boy of yours, you had
better get over it. It's a damn good riddance, and you know it as well
as I do. You'll have to take a brace or something will drop."

If Perkins had not been born several degrees north of Mason and Dixon's
line he would have known better than that; as it was, he did not
understand these negroes. He hadn't the faintest conception of how to
handle these simple-hearted black men. He was not popular with them at
any time, and this unheard-of piece of cruelty cut every tender-hearted
trooper as deeply as if it had been aimed at him personally. This was
the first break, and, as a consequence, something did drop, in a way
that Perkins hardly expected.

The old sergeant made no reply to this reprimand, but simply stood at
attention, though his black, weazened face worked and his lips trembled.
It was the first time since he was a buck private that he had been
spoken to in such a manner. For the first time, the yoke of discipline
galled him. The bitterness of his inferiority and servitude was as
wormwood within him. The harsh injustice of such treatment in this, his
black hour, after years of faithful work, aroused in him a demon of
resentment that made him long to strike back.

The occurrence startled him from his lethargy. He suddenly realized that
his son's few remaining hours on earth were slipping by, and the boy had
not been comforted. When this came to him, his self-reproach cut him
sharply, and he resolved to make amends at once. He obtained permission
from the officer of the day, and that evening, after retreat, went to
see Buff.

He found the general plucked of his plumage. The prospect of death so
close to him had narrowed the black boy's perspective. "The worldly hope
men set their hearts upon" had turned ashes, and it were hard to find "a
man who looked so wistfully on the day" as this doomed soldier. He
wanted to live. Every atom of animal strength in his perfect body was
charged with a desire to exist. This living, day after day, in close
proximity to the grave had tended to a simplification of ideas. He had
harked back to childhood, and when his father came, the prisoner, in his
clanking irons, turned to him as a pickaninny might have done for
protection from some bugaboo.

Old Jeremiah sat on the cot, while Buff occupied a small stool directly
in front of him. They talked in low tones, of ordinary subjects, at
first; then gradually went back through the years. The white-haired old
negro and the young soldier both smiled as they recalled childish
escapades of the latter, 'way back in "God's country." They lost
themselves in reminiscence, and forgot the present, until the wan moon,
coming up, cast the shadows of the bars in the window across them. Then
with a shiver they remembered.

Suddenly the private began to talk of his death, and as he spoke the
terror of it grew on him. This man, known to have killed more than one
American soldier and to be absolutely fearless in battle, quaked with
abject fright. He would contend gladly in a contest against hopeless
odds; but at the thought of his end creeping on him thus, slowly,
inexorably his soul writhed in terror. He leaned forward and pressed his
face on his father's knees.

"Oh, paw, ain't yer gwine ter help me? Won't you do somethin' fer me? Ah
doan' wanter die yit. Tain't my time ter die. Ah nevah meant no hahm,
paw. Ef they'll just give me one moah chanst, ah'll do anything they
say. Honest, ah will. Gawd! paw, yer ain't gwine ter let 'em kill me, is
yer?"

The soldier raised his head and looked into the sergeant's black face as
though the latter were omnipotent, and only had to say the word to make
him free. Then, with a shivering sigh, he laid his head on his father's
knees again.

"Sh--sh," the old sergeant said softly, "Sh--sh"; and that was all he
could do; but his wrinkled hand wandered tenderly over the prisoner's
black, kinky hair, and tears rolled down his seamed face.

When Buff's panic wore off a bit, he was made to lie down, and Jeremiah,
sitting beside him, crooned softly, as the old black mammies do to the
little children. By the time call to quarters sounded, the condemned
man's quiet breathing told that his earthly troubles were forgotten, for
a time at least.

After this visit, Sergeant Wilson's apparent neglect of his duties
became more pronounced than ever. The simplest orders and directions
received from his troop's commander, he either forgot to perform or
executed in such a bunglesome manner as to drive Lieutenant Perkins'
irritable nature to the verge of hysteria. The latter, with his narrow
sympathies, could make no allowance for the old negro's state of mind,
and his "roasts" became more frequent and rougher with each repetition.
The sergeant took it all with apparent resignation; but within him the
troubled spirit was surging to and fro. How could he be expected to copy
troop returns and muster rolls, with that cry--"Gawd, paw, yer ain't
gwine ter let 'em kill me, is yer?" ringing in his ears, hour by hour?
It was the unfairness of it that aroused his resentment.

If the "ole Cap'n" were only here, all would be well. It was another
cruel stroke that he should be absent on detached service just when
Jeremiah needed him most.

Soldiers are a peculiar breed. They are more nearly like children in
certain characteristics than any other class of men. They are so
accustomed to being taken care of by their officers that they look to
the latter for everything. When they find one who they know will stand
up for them, and whom they can trust, their faith and confidence in him
are absolute. They will follow him through fire and flood, and obey any
order that he may give, in the blind belief that he knows what is best
for them. This is true of white soldiers, and much more so of the
darkies. This is the feeling that old Jeremiah and the men of the troop
held for Captain North, whom they all called the "ole Cap'n."

In all the years these two had served together, since the battle of the
Rosebud, when Lieutenant John T. North earned a medal of honor for
"bringing in Private J. Wilson, 19th Cavalry, who was wounded, under a
heavy fire from the Indians, at the imminent risk of his own life," the
sergeant had never received a harsh word or a rebuke that he did not
know was merited. But the sullen fury that this young prig aroused in
him was unbearable. He felt that his inherent subordination to
discipline was being torn to shreds.

This went on for three days. The discipline in the troop was growing
ragged with startling rapidity, and Perkins felt it. The men, under the
constant abuse heaped upon one whom they respected and pitied, were
growing sullen and restive. Each of these soft-hearted troopers was
gradually acquiring and nursing a personal grudge. They were forgetting
their ideas of the fitness of things. They lost sight of everything
except a clearly monumental piece of injustice.

Instead of meeting the issue fairly, and acknowledging the error of his
position, Perkins became obstinately harsher and harsher. Not only was
he unnecessarily abusive to old Jeremiah, but his treatment of the whole
troop was stern to a degree. Finally, on this third day, after a violent
harangue in presence of the troop, he reduced the old negro from first
sergeant to sergeant.

This was the second break, and when Perkins went that morning to inspect
the old church that served as quarters, he found the men congregated in
little groups in the squad room. There was not the usual loud-voiced
chatter and laughter, but a sullen murmur that dropped to quick silence
when he entered. This was bad. There was nothing specific, but he
instinctively felt that he was losing his hold. He chafed to do
something to "smash these niggers," but there was nothing to seize upon;
so he swore at a man loudly for not having his clothing arranged
properly, and ordered him to the guard-house. When the officer left, the
same ominous murmur arose in the quarters.

It was evident, also, that outside influences were beginning to
work--the sign of the Katapunan. There was hardly a man in "B" Troop but
had his _querida_ or sweetheart among the native women. As one of the
black soldiers remarked: "Ef de gem'men Filypinos had 'a' been as
complacent as de ladies, der nevah would 'a' bin no insurrecshun nohow."
In their off hours the men, in their grim anger, confided their troubles
to these dusky females, and the crafty women began to work upon the
spirit of rebellion amongst the simple colored soldiers.

Why did they submit themselves to such a wretch as this _Teniente_
Perkins? Why didn't they show him that they were men to be feared? Why
did they allow that magnificent black comrade, Wilson, to be hanged,
without making an effort to save him; when doing so would be the one
thing that would make _Teniente_ Perkins wild with rage? They were too
cunning to urge open mutiny, but the seed they sowed gave growth to
thought.

The darkies of "B" Troop were, first of all, soldiers. Subordination to
the wills of their superiors was ingrained in their natures. They did
not want to "buck," but it seemed as if the troop commander were trying
to force them to rebel. They endeavored to forget the words of the
Filipino women; but how could they, when all day long old Sergeant
Wilson sat in the corner of the squad room, clasping and unclasping his
straining hands; while on his sleeves were the marks where his first
sergeant's chevrons had been ripped off?

Two more days dragged by, and conditions in the troop grew worse.
Perkins had heard some loud-mouthed private baying forth incendiary, not
to say uncomplimentary remarks; had placed the troop on the straight
ration, and suppressed the pass list. The men wandered about the
quarters with a nervous, preoccupied air. They did not look at each
other. They felt that if they gave rein to their feelings, something
horrible would happen. They did not want it to happen; they wanted to be
good soldiers. But this man was forcing them; forcing their hands. There
is a limit to everything. What he had done was nothing if they had
deserved it. It was the rank injustice that made them furious. They felt
that they must have some escape for their feelings or they would burst
through the bonds. Consequently, when Sergeant Potter broached his
scheme, they hailed it with acclamation. A little conference was held in
one end of the quarters, and after it was over Potter went to speak to
old Jeremiah.

The ex-first sergeant had taken no part in the proceedings--in fact, he
knew nothing of them. He had stayed in his corner, where he had sat for
the last three days, with his eyes fixed on the floor, clasping and
unclasping his hands. Sergeant Potter sat down on a bunk beside him and
touched him on the shoulder. The old man started.

"Look a yere, sarge, yer oughter take a brace. Me and the res' of de
boys is mighty sorry fer yer--we showly is. But yer mussent grieve so,
cause yer showly gwineter be sick ef yer does."

"I'se obleeged to yer, Potter, you and de boys."

"Yes, suh, me an de boys feels mighty bad cause yer got busted, an'--an'
about the other things. Ef yer'll 'scuse me, sarge, fer talkin' about
it, we wondered ef dere wahnt somethin' yer could do fur--fur Buff."

Seeing the drawn look come back to the older man's face, Potter
continued hurriedly----

"Thar now, sarge, I'se powerful sorry ef I'se hu't yoh feelin's, but me
an' de boys thought ef yer'd telegraph to Division Headquatahs, dey
might do somethin'. 'Twon't do no hahm, nohow."

He then went on and talked in such a persuasive strain that, in spite of
his common-sense, a gleam of hope began to burn in Jeremiah's eyes. Yes,
it would cost something, but the boys had got together a little purse to
defray the expenses of the telegram. This could be turned over to the
Lieutenant, who would doubtless have no difficulty in getting the
necessary permission from the squadron commander. The old man had been
inactive and without hope for so long that the idea of any effort
embracing a chance of success aroused in him a fierce energy. Once
persuaded, he was impatient to be at work. If anything were to be done,
it must be done at once. In the next day and the next, Private Wilson's
sands would have run out.

It was apparently a good omen that Lieutenant Perkins should walk into
the quarters while they were talking. Potter and Jeremiah went to him
without loss of time and respectfully broached their request. The rest
of the men stood around at attention, trying to look as though they were
not listening, but straining their ears to catch every word. The officer
heard them through, and then burst out impatiently----

"Well, of all the wild-cat schemes I ever heard of, that is the worst.
The idea, Wilson, of a man of your length of service proposing such a
thing. Hanging is too good for that son of yours, and you know it. I'll
have nothing to do with this, and don't want to hear any more of it.
That'll do now."

The silence that followed these words was silence indeed. Every man in
the room caught them, and there was not one of the fifty present who did
not feel a hot, uncomfortable throbbing at his temples.

In the old sergeant, the last connecting link of discipline was strained
nearly to the breaking point. An angry gleam appeared in his eyes, and
he said in a low, shaking voice:

"Ve'ly well, Suh, I shall go to de commandin' officah."

"All right, you can do as you please about that; but you will hear from
it," and Perkins walked into the orderly room, where he proceeded to
make life miserable for the subdued wretch who was acting first sergeant
of the troop.

In a few minutes the commanding officer's orderly presented the
commanding officer's compliments to Lieutenant Perkins, and informed him
that the commanding officer would like to see him at the office.

Major Don Carlos Bliss, who was known throughout the service as a
splendid soldier, did not think much of Perkins. He had had his eye on
"B" Troop lately, and did not like the looks of things a little bit. He
was a man of strong convictions and never hesitated to express them. He
had known old Jeremiah Wilson for years, and when he learned of the
latter's reduction, his opinion that Perkins was a fool was duly
confirmed. He knew that much of the lieutenant's irritability was due to
"nerves" acquired by a steady and conscientious course of drinking, with
which procedure he had no patience.

Perkins, when he entered, found the sergeant standing at the desk.

"Mr. Perkins," the Major said shortly, "while Sergeant Wilson's request
is a little out of the ordinary, I have no objection to his sending a
telegram through this office. I can put no recommendation for clemency
in it, however, for I consider the sentence a just one. When you get
this message drafted the way Sergeant Wilson wants it, bring it to me,
and let me see it, and," he concluded, looking Perkins steadily in the
eye from under his bushy brows, "I advise you to do it at once."

The telegram went that afternoon. The plea for clemency was based,
principally, upon Sergeant Wilson's years of faithful service, and the
fact that his son was too young to appreciate the enormity of his crime.

Twenty-four hours passed, and there was no answer to the message. In
that time Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson drank deeply of the bitter cup. He
had aged suddenly in the last two weeks. Brooding in the hot, sticky,
tropical days is not good for a man, especially when that man is no
longer young. Shapes and shadows in the brain grow rapidly, and soon
assume enormous proportions. Now the fluctuating tides of hope and
despair gnawed steadily at the weakened foundation of his reason. The
men of the troop were more restless and ill at ease than ever. They had
lost sight of the fact that the prisoner's guilt was as black as the
mouth of the pit. All they saw was a darky soldier clinging tenaciously
to his life, and the agony of that darky's father. Each sympathetic
trooper had begotten a personal interest that ruled him completely.
Besides, the mad hatred they bore Perkins and the hope of backsetting
him led them on. Shapes and shadows were growing in their minds also.

Twenty-seven hours after the appeal was sent to Division Headquarters a
signal corps private walked into "B" Troop's barracks and asked for
Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson. When the latter was pointed out, the man
handed him the familiar yellow envelope, with the crossed signal flags
on the cover, and the burning torch. An instant quiet fell in the room,
as Jeremiah received the crackling paper. He took it deliberately, and
with trembling fingers fumbled for his glasses. Deliberately he put them
on, and deliberately abstracted the message from the envelope, while the
silent troopers watched him with fascinated gaze. He unfolded the paper
and stared at it, then, taking off his glasses, wiped them and stared
again; but it was no use, the mist dimmed the lenses.

"Heah, Potter, you read hit," he said finally with unsteady voice. "De
light's too bad. Ah can't see."

Sergeant Potter took the telegram and spelled it out slowly:

            MANILA, P. I., OCT. 2, 1900.
                           5.30 P.M.

    SERGEANT J. WILSON,
        TR, "B," 19TH CAV.

    (Thro the Commanding Officer Guinibongbong, P. I.)

    The Division Commander will take no action nor grant any delay
    in case of Private B. Wilson, Nineteenth Cavalry. Has no
    objection to laying of case before President provided cable is
    without expense to government. Upon receipt of cable through
    this office indicating that such action is contemplated order of
    suspension will be issued.

        By order MAJOR GENERAL WHEATLEY,
    CASTIN, ADJUTANT GENERAL.

So that was the end of it. The irony, the humor of giving permission to
lay the case before the President; by cable, too, with cable-grams only
costing fifty cents a word! What magnanimity, what sarcasm, in sending
such permission to a negro sergeant drawing twenty-six dollars a month!
It would have been better for Jeremiah's peace of mind if that part had
been left out. After it was over, and in the years to come, he would
never be able to escape the thought that one thing more might have been
done to save Buff's life--that once chance was left untried because of
the lack of a few paltry dollars. Potter handed back the telegram
slowly, and Jeremiah walked out into the darkness to fight his fight
alone.

The sergeant stopped on the small stone porch and looked out into the
town plaza. The clouds were low and dark in the late twilight, and as
he stood, a few big drops fell, slowly increasing until there was a
heavy down-pour. The rains had come, and soon the monotonous roar on the
metal roofs, steady as the beating of a giant heart, told that the earth
was receiving its semi-annual deluge.

Jeremiah stood in a small niche where he was partially exposed to the
rain. When it and the water from a broken gutter, striking a balustrade
beside him, splashed him with fine spray, he made no effort to move. Why
should he care? He was only a worthless old nigger. A little wetness
more or less would make no difference. A carelessness for all things
earthly and pertaining to his own worn-out old body grew upon him. Then
he suddenly ceased to think of himself. The sound of the rain in his
ears seemed to be boring into his brain. Steady, inexorable,
unanswerable as fate, it weighed upon him like a giant hand, and it came
to him that he was comparing that roar to the death that was approaching
his son.

When old Jeremiah left the squad room, there had been general silence
for a time, and then events began to move rapidly, as they continued to
do until the end of this peculiar episode. Sergeant Potter stood for a
moment, with his hands behind his back, gazing at the floor, then he
looked up, and cried out to the whole room:

"Look a heah, boys, is yer gwine ter be beat dis a way? Is yer gwine ter
tuck yer tails atween yer laigs, and say 'let 'er go!' as long as dere
is a chanst? Is yer goin' to 'low dat monkey-faced lootinint to grin at
yer sarcastic? Yer know me. I'se as strong fur discipline as any pu'son;
but dere's a eend to every man's patience." He jerked a hat off a bunk
near him, and threw it down. "Dis is all de dough I got in de worl'," he
said, holding up two silver dollars, "but she'll send fo' words to de
Presydent of dese United States, so heah she goes," and he tossed them
into the hat at his feet. "Come on, boys, dem as wants to be high-tone
and pass de time o' day with de Presydent, chip in."

As soon as they grasped the idea, the appeal was effectual. Out came all
the cash the black men had. It was mostly Mex. _medio pesos_ and
_pesetas_, for "pay day, pay day" had not sounded for over a month. The
silver jingled merrily into the hat, and the affair became a sort of
jollification, each man vying with the others to see how much more he
could "dig up." Their volatile natures, guided solely by impulse and an
undercurrent of generosity, led them to give all they had without
thinking. Man after man, in high good-humor, plunged his hands into
some corner of his box locker and raked up little hoards of cash that he
had saved for tobacco, soap, and such necessities. However, when the
silver was poured on the bed and counted, Sergeant Potter scratched his
woolly head.

"Tain't no kinder use, boys. Twenty-fo' dollars an' ten cents. Dat'll
sen' fo'ty-eight big words and one little 'un. Dat ain't nowhere near
a'nuf. He'd show'ly feel mightly slighted, de Presydent would, ef we
did'n sen' 'im no mo' talk dan dat. We gotter 'spress dis thing logical
an' ellygant, ur he won't take no notice uf it, none whatever. We
nacherally gotter have mo' uf de muzuma."

This was very discouraging, and produced more deep thought and head
rubbing, until Private Andy Smith broke out:

"Well, dis ain't no time fer tu back out. Damn de 17th Article uv
Wah[4]! Jess watch my smoke, niggers."

The rest of the men observed him curiously as he shouldered his way out
of the circle. He went to his gold medal cot, and jerking off one of the
fine, heavy army blankets, spread it on the floor. Then he rummaged
amongst the clothing in his locker, and taking out a pair of extra
shoes, a flannel shirt, and a white stable suit, rolled them into his
blanket. Throwing the bundle thus made over his shoulder, he stalked out
into the rain.

The effect of this eminently lawless example was instantaneous. The
splendid regulation blankets and flannel shirts were at a premium among
the natives, and the market was never dull. They could be coined into
_pesos_ on sight. There was a grand rush, and soon the blankets and
spare articles of clothing went forth into the night, lugged by their
respective owners. Shortly the darkies, wet and steaming, began to stamp
back into the quarters, and the "dobie dollars" again clinked into the
crown of Potter's old campaign hat.

Lieutenant Roger Williams Perkins was what is known as a solitary
drinker. They are the worst kind. They drink by themselves, and purely
for the effect. Doubtless their mental processes at such times are
curious indeed.

The rain was falling steadily outside. There was no chance that any of
the other men would come in to-night. Perkins sat alone at his table, as
he had sat since six o'clock. It was now eight, and as he reached to
take "another one," he heard two persons coming up the steps. He swore
to himself and set the glass down. Turning, he found Sergeants Potter
and Wilson at the head of the stairs, their dripping hats in their
hands. Their ponchos glistened in the lamp-light, and from them ran
little streams of water that gathered in globular pools, like
quick-silver, on the oiled floor.

Perkins, of course, had heard of the answer to the telegram, and had
thought the matter closed; but now these niggers had come to trouble him
again. They came forward, trailing their streams of water behind them.
He heard them through. He answered them craftily, smiling behind his
hand, with the cunning born of the fog in his brain. Shortly they went
away again, leaving on the table a pile of silver. Cable the President!
What a joke! and he chuckled aloud. He would teach them to come and
worry him with their foolishness.

Still the rain roared on the roof. Still he sat and drank, and drank
again, until the lamp-light grew sick and wan in the damp gray day.

The first sergeant, with the Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the
same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the
sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came
and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell;
the rain streamed down; and still the officer sat as before.

At eight fifteen he looked up to find Wilson and Potter before him.
There were the same glistening ponchos, the same little streams of
water, the same pools on the oiled floor. He himself sat in the same
place. The soldiers might have been gone ten minutes instead of
twenty-four hours, for all the change there was in the scene. Only the
pile of silver had disappeared.

No, no answer to the cablegram had been received, and Perkins could
hardly conceal his desire to roar with laughter, as the two turned and
trailed their streams of water back down the stairs.

At four o'clock he wobbled to the bed and threw himself down with all
his clothes on. He awoke at six, and, getting up uncertainly, went to
the window and looked out. Still rain and murky grayness everywhere. As
he stood, the assembly went; for when a man is to be hanged, a little
thing like rain does not interfere. Perkins turned from the window
quickly, and plunged his head into a basin of cold water. Then, in spite
of the early hour, he took a stiff "bracer," and throwing on his
slicker, went out. At the foot of the stairs he found the orderly with
the horses, and, mounting with suspicious care, he rode to the stables.

The troop was in ranks and waiting. Before the roll was called,
Sergeant Wilson, his face drawn and wrinkled like old parchment, came
forward and asked hesitatingly if there were any news from Washington.
The officer shook his head. The cords in the old negro's throat worked
convulsively, and he requested rather brokenly that he might be excused
from this formation, and be allowed to remain in charge of quarters.

"No," the Lieutenant replied thickly; "there is no reason why _you_
should be excused any more than any one else. The regular man will
remain in charge of quarters." The whole troop heard, as he intended
they should. The "bracer" was getting in its work, and Perkins was
feeling good again. The wily schemes, the shapes and shadows of the
previous night, were growing in his brain once more. He would teach
these niggers who was who.

And so they took Private Buff Wilson out into the falling rain and
hanged him. In the center of the square, formed by the squadron he had
disgraced, he paid the price. The solemn hills, shrouded in mist, looked
down, sadly, impassively. They were not more motionless on their
everlasting foundations than was Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson, sitting his
big bay like a granite statue, the tragedy of the ages and of his race
deep in the hollow sockets of his eyes. For is it not written: "_A
servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren_"?

The signal was given. The trap fell with a bang; the spray flew from the
snapping rope; and Private Wilson was jerked unceremoniously into the
presence of his Maker. Justice was satisfied, and the account was
balanced.

When a man is hanged, he must be buried. To bury a man it takes a detail
in charge of a non-commissioned officer. The non-commissioned officer is
designated by name from the sergeant-major's office. He is also chosen
by roster in his proper order. It happened to be Sergeant Jeremiah
Wilson's turn for duty. Consequently Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson was told
off to bury his own son.

There was no detachment, no ceremony, no firing squad--only an escort
wagon containing a black Q. M. coffin, upon which were perched four or
five wet, disconsolate troopers armed with picks and shovels. Old
Jeremiah followed, mounted, a feverish light in his eyes and drops of
moisture standing on his grizzled mustache. So he went forth and saw
them consign to earth the clod that had been his son--or rather, consign
to water, for the grave was half full when they reached it. He did not
see it, either; but he heard it.

He heard the splash as the casket was dropped into the half-filled
grave. He heard the grating of the bamboo poles used to hold it down
until the earth could be placed upon it. He heard the sucking and
bubbling as the water forced its way in and the air forced its way out.
He heard the splash of the muddy clay until the heaviness of it seemed
to descend upon his own heart. The shapes and shadows struggled to and
fro in his aching brain until they triumphed. Sergeant Wilson, to the
naked eye as sane as any man, was mad; mad as a hatter.

He went back to the quarters and to his old corner. There, as before, he
sat hour after hour, clasping and unclasping his hands. At times he
startled all in hearing by throwing back his head and laughing harshly.
The men regarded him furtively and with uneasiness.

The dreary night, with its drearier unending rain, had dropped once
more. Lieutenant Perkins was seated in his old place. He had been there
since the execution in the morning. This was the longest session he had
ever indulged in; but the moral fiber degenerates rapidly in the
tropics. Besides, the friendly rain had curtained him and kept away the
spoil-sports. All day he had sat communing with the shapes and shadows.
And it was very pleasant. He had triumphed.

Lately, however, an unpleasant idea had been flitting elusively through
his consciousness--a something that marred the full measure of his
achievement. Time and again he almost grasped it, only to have it slip
from him. What was it? What was it?

Ah, yes; he had it. They were, as yet, ignorant of how he had fooled
them! They must know it to make the joy complete. What sport to take
their money back to them and tell them to their faces what monkeys he
had made of them! Why not do it now? Yes; what a brilliant idea! He
would do it at once.

Just before call to quarters Perkins staggered into the main squad room.
The men stood to attention and observed him with wonder. He was soaking
wet, and the water was streaming down from his uncovered hair. Without
speaking, he walked to the end of the big nara-wood table in the center
of the room, and began to take silver coins from his bulging pockets. He
clawed out handfuls of them and planked them down in a pile; the smaller
ones leaking through his fingers and falling to the stone floor, where
they rolled away with musical tinklings, or hid themselves in the
cracks. Finally, when he had succeeded, with laborious care, in
extracting one last dime from the depths of his pocket, he said thickly,
waving his arms with an all-embracing oratorical gesture:

"All you men come here." The troopers moved close, and formed on three
sides of the table. They stepped quietly, some hint of what was to be
having come to them.

"Got somethin' to tell you. You think you are very smart, doncher? You
think you--" he rubbed his forehead reflectively and struggled for
words. What _was_ it he wanted to tell them? Oh, yes; that was it. "You
think you're smart, doncher?" and he leaned forward on the table,
peering around the circle; "but 'cher all damn fools. Me, I'm a smart
man," and he indicated the center button of his blouse with his thumb,
drawing himself up haughtily.

"You thought I cabled to the President, din'cher?" he continued, leaning
forward again, and returning to his confidential tone. "Not on your
life. See, there's the money. What a joke," and he burst into drunken
hilarity, reeling from side to side, while the tears ran down his face.

The quiet in the room was absolute, except for the officer's unholy
mirth, and the steady fall of the rain. At the sound of that laughter,
old Jeremiah, who had sat in his corner unmindful of the officer's
presence, got up and came forward to the opposite end of the table.
There was a dazed look in his face as though he were just waking from a
deep sleep. He glanced around at the other negroes, standing silently
with wide eyes, then at the drunken officer, and finally at the pile of
silver. Then he knew. As soon as Perkins saw the old soldier, he
chuckled with renewed glee.

"Hallo, sergeant, you ole fool. The joke's on you. Yessir, the joke's on
you. You thought I cabled to the President; but I did'n'. Nosir, I
did'n'." And he went off into renewed peals of laughter.

Suddenly he stopped short. He saw that there was no appreciation of his
witticisms; only a blur of blank black faces and white, rolling eyes.

"Why don't you laugh, you damn apes? You damn black idiots, why don't
you laugh? You----you----"

He ceased quickly, for another voice broke the silence. It was old
Sergeant Wilson speaking. No one could tell when he had begun. He stood
slightly crouched, with his hands on the edge of the table. His face was
absolutely blank and expressionless, while his eyes were fixed on the
officer with a tense, glassy stare. His voice was cold and monotonous,
without rise or fall, halt or intonation, and seemed to be more the wail
of the spirit rising from somewhere deep within him than the voice of
the flesh.

"You heah that, boys? You heah what he says? He calls us apes; us that
God made as well as him. 'Cause we ahr black he calls us apes. We ahr no
better dan de dirt undah his feet. He tooken ouh money an' fooled us,
an' now he is laughin' 'cause he fooled us. He tooken ouh money and
lied to us. An' while he wuz a-foolin' us, us apes, dey taken mah boy,
mah baby, out an' killed him. Out in de rain. An' ah heered de trap
fall, an' de rope snap. An' _he_ heered it, an' laughed when he heered
it!"

As he spoke, the sergeant never took his eyes from the officer's face,
and moved slowly around the table, crouching a little, and creeping
stealthily as a beast of prey might move upon an animal that it was
attempting to fascinate. And the officer was being fascinated. He stood
as though transfixed, his jaw hanging and his straining glance bent on
the approaching soldier.

The body of troopers was getting restless. Their eyes, too, had taken on
a peculiar shine, and were all focused upon the white face of the
officer.

The wail of that dead, monotonous voice was to these negroes as the call
of the wild. It touched a chord in them that antedated the deluge. They
moved closer, imperceptibly, and moistened their dry lips with their
tongues. There is something mortally appalling in that simple action.
The dead voice continued: "An' dey sent me out to bury him, my own baby.
An' _he_ laughed when ah went. Ah seen 'im laugh. An' dey tooken mah boy
and put 'im in a deep black grave; an' de col', col' watah wuz on 'im
an' raoun' 'im, an' ah heerd it splash when dey put 'im thar. An' he is
thar now, in de col' black grave, an' de watah is on 'im, an' ah kin
feel de watah; an' de dirt is a-weighin' me down. Heah on my ches'. An'
dis man is a-laughin' at us an' says hit is a joke!"

The old sergeant was now within three feet of the officer. The latter
was gray as putty, and sober. It did not take the inclosing circle, the
heavy breathing, the wild, staring eyes and tight-drawn lips to tell him
his danger. He felt the Presence. The air was pregnant with it. He took
a step backward and moved his stiff lips as though to speak; but there
was no sound. The voice went on:

"He laughed at us; but he won't laugh no moah. God done made 'im to look
lak a man; but he ain't no man. He is a snake an' creeps in de grass.
God sez in his book dat all snakes mus' be killed an'--" the sergeant
took another step; the officer took a step backward, and the crowd
surged forward with a quick, hoarse gasp. Then the terror gripped him,
and turning, the officer made a dash for the door.

Again the circle closed in as the sea surges up upon the land. There
were tossing arms; there was the hissing of breath through clenched
teeth, the sickening thud of blows, and a gurgling cry of mortal agony.
Then the sea surged out again, and there on the floor lay the thing
that had been Lieutenant Roger Williams Perkins.

The ring of negroes stood fast. Their shoulders rose and fell as their
convulsive breaths were indrawn and exhaled. They seemed to be wondering
what had happened. Several raised their hands and observed them
curiously, first one and then the other, as though they were strange
objects never seen before. One placed his fingers to his nose and smelt
them furtively. Another tried to rub off the thick, dark stain, but with
little success. The "moving finger" had written.

When the catastrophe occurred, five or ten of the weak-kneed had rushed
from the building, and even as these guilty ones stood there, there was
a clatter of arms outside. Some one yelled: "the guahd," and they knew
that their deeds had overtaken them.

In the momentary pandemonium that followed, old Sergeant Wilson was
heard calling above the din: "Out with dem lights! Pile de bunks agin'
de doahs an' winders!" They had learned to obey that voice before, in
many a tight place, and now it had its old-time ring. So they went and
did. A saber hilt rattled on the portal. "Open the door! This is the
officer of the guard."

"To hell wiff de officah of de guahd. Open hit yo'se'f!" was bellowed in
reply. The strain was relieved, and the sally was greeted with a wild
yapping from the rest, such as might have risen from a den of trapped
wolves. Several ran to the windows. There was a sputtering volley of
carbine shots, and Troop "B," 19th U.S. Cavalry, was in open mutiny.

Now when a troop of United States cavalry rises against those in
authority, incidents begin to occur at once. The times when such a thing
has happened can be counted on the fingers of one hand, with some digits
to spare. There was, in this case, no room for parley or exchange of
flags of truce. The thing with which the ants were already busy there on
the floor was an uncontrovertible fact. Consequently, there being no
grounds upon which to arbitrate the matter, the mutineers blazed away
cheerfully at anything that showed itself on the plaza. They had now
nothing to lose.

Then, shortly, there sounded from the guard-house, through the
rain-drenched night, the call that jerks the soldier out of his bunk,
all standing, from any sleep but that of death: the "call to arms."

In fifteen minutes "B" Troop's quarters were surrounded on all sides by
the other troops of the squadron, the men of which, from safe cover,
observed the carbine flashes and wild yells emanating therefrom with
mild surprise, and wondered "what de hell had broke loose."

Major Bliss sat under the smoky lantern at the guard-house, surrounded
by the officers of the station. He questioned sharply the men who had
escaped from "B" Troop's barracks. At intervals he swore mightily and
cursed the day that Roger Williams Perkins was born.

"And to think that old Wilson should be at the head of this! Old Wilson,
of all men! Why, he is worth fifty thousand Perkinses, dead or alive. I
am only sorry that Perkins didn't get away. I should like to have got
hold of him myself, damn him."

There was no hesitation in the makeup of Major Bliss. He intended to
suppress this outbreak in a manner that would tend to discourage any
such ebullitions in the future. Consequently, he made his dispositions
with grimness and determination. His plan was simple, his orders being
to "rush 'em and give 'em hell." His greatest regret was that the
interests of discipline should make such a step necessary, since he was
sure that a majority of the mutineers had acted upon impulse, and were
already excessively sorry for themselves.

In the midst of these untoward events, the "Tarlac," coastwise transport
blew into the bay through the murk and rain, and Captain North, of "B"
Troop, the "Ole Cap'n," returned to the station. Hearing the shots and
yells, he concluded that the Major was "shooting up the town," and
splashed hurriedly to his quarters for his saber and revolver. There in
the darkness he stumbled over his _muchacho_, who had deposited himself
at the foot of the steps and was earnestly beseeching his patron saint
to have him spared this once; promising an altar cloth and innumerable
candles if he should be allowed to exist long enough to secure them,
thus putting on that gentleman's intercession a premium that he trusted
would be effective. The Captain being naturally impulsive, the accident
did not improve his temper to any appreciable extent. Besides this, the
matches were wet, and there was no oil in the lamp. Consequently he had
to search for his weapons in the dark. After falling over his bunk and
numberless chairs, and upsetting his field desk, he found his saber and
revolver, only to discover that both, owing to the neglect of that same
sanctified _muchacho_ on the stairs, were covered with rust; that the
cylinder of the revolver would not revolve; and that at least two strong
men and a boy would be required to coax the saber from its scabbard!

All this while the shooting and yelling were going on, and by the time
he splashed out into the rain once more, the good Captain was what is
technically known as "mad as a hornet!" He started on a run to "B"
Troop's quarters, to take command of his men, only to be stopped by a
sentinel, who informed him that "B" Troop was in no mood to be taken
command of, and that he had "bettah go to de guahd-house." Being ordered
to the guard-house by a private did not tend to quiet his state of mind
any, even when the situation was explained. By the time he burst in on
the assembled officers at the post of the guard, Captain North was
madder than ever.

"What the devil is going on here, Bliss? What's this I hear about 'B'
Troop's busting loose? This is a hell of a state of affairs."

"That is just what I think, North, and very neatly expressed," the Major
replied dryly. "Lovely discipline you have in that band of Indians of
yours. They've mutinied, no less, and apparently they have got Perkins.
A nice----"

"Mutinied, have they? Why, the infernal black scoundrels," almost roared
the irate officer, striding up and down the room. "Mutinied, have they?
What the devil do they mean by doing a thing like that without saying
anything to me about it? I'll mutiny 'em! Don't you interfere with me,
Bliss," he continued, halting in his walk, "don't you interfere with me.
This is my troop, and I can handle them. Don't you interfere with me."

"My dear North, no one has shown any inclination to interfere with you,
has he?"

"That's right," and the Captain continued his march, "that's right. I
can attend to these gentlemen. This plan of rushing them, though, is all
wrong, all wrong"; and he stopped again. "They'll fight, fight like the
devil. I ought to know. I've seen them do it often enough. You'll lose
good men. In opposing them with force you recognize the strength in
them. What you need is moral force. One man power. Same principle in
training lions. Same principle. If a lion-tamer went into a cage of ten
lions with ten men, he'd have trouble on his hands from the jump; but he
can go alone and bluff 'em. Same principle here. If I could get into the
middle of that bunch over there without their seeing me until I _was_
there, I'd scare them out of ten years' growth. How to get there, that's
the question."

"Why, North, you are crazy. They'd get you, sure. They'd eat you up,
man."

"Eat _me_ up? Why, they'd as soon think of tackling the late Mr. Peter
Jackson. They know me. How to get there, that's the question. Walking
across the plaza they couldn't tell _me_ from any one else."

"Beg yoah pahdin', sah," and Private Massay of "B" Troop, who was the
commanding officer's orderly for the day, spoke up, "Ef de Cap'n could
git in through de little doah in de stoah-room, and go through de
kitchen, I speck he could git in widout bein' ketched."

"Right, Massay, the very thing. Somebody give me a lantern. Confound it,
one of you men get me a lantern, and be quick about it." A member of the
guard gave him the required article, and concealing it carefully under
his poncho, he went quickly out. The Major and other officers jumped up
and followed. All the way down the dreary, rain-swept street the Major
attempted to persuade the Captain to give up his foolhardy enterprise,
but without result. Finally, when they reached the cordon of surrounding
troops, the senior officer said:

"Well, North, this is absolutely absurd, and out of the question. If you
insist, I shall have to give you an order not to go."

"No, you won't do that, Bliss." The Captain's anger had left him now,
and he spoke quietly. "We have known each other a long time, and seen a
lot of service together. You won't take advantage of your rank to stop
me now. I am only doing what you would do in my place. It is my troop.
The shame and disgrace are mine. You won't stop me now."

The Major hesitated a moment and then spoke slowly, and with evident
feeling:

"Well--well. Have your way; but be careful, John, be careful."

They saw him move quietly along under the shadow of a wall, cross the
street, and disappear in a small side door of "B" Troop's quarters. He
was not discovered.

For the last half hour the silence and the blackness of the grave had
existed in "B" Troop's big squad room. The "shouting and the tumult" had
died a lingering death. One cannot yell and hurl challenge indefinitely,
and shouting up one's courage begins to lose its efficacy if long
continued. One big-lunged mutineer had held out with his firing and
bellowing until the nerves of the rest could stand it no longer. They
then rudely suppressed him. He sounded so absurdly and pathetically
foolish. He was typical of their own status. "One nigger shootin' a
bluff at de whole United States Army!" They realized that with fifty it
was no less idiotic.

If it had not been for old Wilson passing stealthily to and fro among
them, with that wild light in his eyes, and those crazy mumblings,
doubtless there would have, already, been breaks in the ranks. But no;
there was that other thing, lying over there where it fell. There was no
use now; there could be no looking back. Each turned wearily to his door
or window and renewed his wide-eyed effort to pierce the web of
blackness over the square. And the everlasting rain still fell.

A door swung cautiously somewhere. There was the sound of some one
moving with steady, determined step down the center of the room. Then,
without warning, their unaccustomed eyes were momentarily blinded by a
light taken suddenly from under a poncho; and there in the center of the
room stood a lone officer; in one hand a lantern, in the other a big
blue revolver.

For an instant there was no movement. Then there was a counter reaction.
With the snarl of wild animals, the fifty negroes sprang toward the
center of the room. Sergeant Wilson was first. With a cry of: "Kill him!
kill him!" he bounded over a bunk, and landed within three feet of the
officer, revolver upraised. As he did so, the officer lifted the lantern
to a level with his own face. The sergeant stopped. The whole circle
halted, as though Circe had transfixed them. They had recognized the
"Ole Cap'n."

"Well, Wilson." At the sound of the voice the old negro's countenance
changed instantly. It became the face of a man in mortal anguish, as
indeed he was. In that moment the scales had fallen from his vision. He
saw his position clearly in the light of the sorrowful glance from the
"ole Cap'n's" eyes. It was as though the main pillar of the heavens had
been pulled out, and the skies were thundering down about his dazed old
ears.

"Oh, Gawd, oh, Gawd!" he groaned, putting one hand to his head, and
rocking it from side to side, as though the pain there were more than he
could stand.

"Oh, Gawd, oh, Gawd." The revolver was lowered slowly from its upraised
position, and suddenly, before the officer could stop him, the sergeant
turned it against himself. There was a flash, an earsplitting report,
and the old soldier sank to the floor. There he stretched himself
wearily, as though for a long sleep, and Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson, of
the "old Army," was gathered to his fathers.

The Captain turned away abruptly. He knew that old Wilson was a good
shot.

"Open the doors," he said to the troopers, as though he had been telling
them good morning. Compliance to that voice, raised in command, was to
these soldiers a second nature. There was not the slightest hesitation.
With eager alacrity they hastened to obey, like children who had been
caught misbehaving.

In the first faintness of the dawn the tired-faced troopers cheerfully
filed out and formed in front of the quarters, each one, as he passed
through the door, depositing his arms at the officer's feet. Oh, but it
was good to be on the right side again; and the "ole Cap'n" would take
care of his own.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Art. 17. Any soldier who sells, or through neglect loses or spoils
his horse, arms, clothing, or accoutrements, shall be punished as a
court martial may adjudge, subject to such humiliations as may be
prescribed by the President, by virtue of the power vested in him.

THE SINGER'S HEART

BY

HARRIS MERTON LYON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. B. MASTERS

    _"I never cared for the singer's fame,
    But, oh, for the singer's heart
        Once more--
    The bleeding, passionate heart!"--"B. V."_

These are a few films from the human biograph of Harry Barnes, old
actor. You know, when you are old, you accept life with more or less of
a sigh of quiet acquiescence, and by your cozy fire you sit and nod to
an inner voice, a gentle old voice which over and over whispers and
murmurs--"Once upon a time, once upon a time." And possibly Barnes would
have nodded, too, but he lacked the cozy fire. Life has its dramatic
unities, it would seem, and if one thing or another is awry we are apt
not to perform as the book says we should. No cozy fire, says the Great
Stage Manager; no nodding acquiescence, replies the Mummer in the Play.

Barnes listened, it is true, over and over to the voice which murmured
"Once upon a time," but he sat not by a comfortable open grate, amid
grandchildren. Instead, he lurked in East Fourteenth Street amid
decaying agents' offices, hunting a chance to do a bad monologue in a
worse vaudeville show. He had outlasted his time; he could not get work.
He lived on those two heartless things, Hope and Memory. And for all I
know he is living on them yet.

Now, you will not in your careless youth or your sceptical maturity find
beauty in this story, you will not "get under the skin" of it, as the
saying is, unless you have stopped sometime in your busy going, to
consider, aside and with understanding, the pathos of the old actor. It
is a curiously poignant human thing, written about by a few, suffered by
many, and ignored by the loud, inordinate world.

The old actor out of employment! A target for jokes, a piece of
battered, ancient "property" cluttering up a new and very busy stage.
You smile at his curious figure, unconscious of the broken misery that
aches beneath, where life has died and living goes paradoxically on;
and only sometimes late at night do you get a part of that hidden ache
when you hear old legs drag weary feet up the boarding-house stairs,
past your door and on up into the skylight room on the roof,
despondently to bed; and you know that the old man has had another
unsuccessful day among the agents and the managers. You can sometimes
interpret the querulous little laugh over the thin oatmeal at breakfast,
sometimes you can guess the water in the rapidly winking eyes; but of
course you do not proclaim your deductions. Civilization is a process of
making less noise about things.

This is a segment of the life-film of Harry Barnes, old actor, as he
traveled the stones of Fourteenth Street. Not the Rialto, where fat men
adorned with fat diamonds smoke fat cigars in order to narcotize fat
consciences; but Fourteenth Street, grimy with old, sparsely-tenanted
buildings, where theatrical offices three flights up bargain for the
driblets of trade among the low music-halls and the cheapest vaudeville
houses, where niggardly, gray-haired agents have for two generations sat
among their dusty contracts and their rusty pens, haggling over
bread-and-water salaries with the jetsam of a too-volatile profession.

Harry was old and dropsical with drink, a sad hero for a careless story.
The only ideal he had ever had, besides one, was to arrive at the fine
fame of printer's ink: headlines, bill-boards, critical notices,
reproductions of his photograph. But this was long ago. He had longed to
be chronicled in his time, preëminent and large; this he had desired
with that hungry passion for display which only an actor can feel. But
this, remember, was once upon a time. His other ideal--no need to
mention it amid Momus and his mimes!--was to sway people with laughter
and tears, to burn them with romance, to chasten them with tragedy, to
carry them with him in his frenzy, to play upon them with his art.

Art! Do you care for a grotesque, serious evening in its humblest
presence? Have you time to listen, over beer glass and cigarette, to a
broken-down old actor out of a job?

[Illustration: HARRY BARNES, OLD ACTOR]

Barnes was incongruously named when he was given the name of Harry. It
is a flippant name. It calls up merriness, youth, bravado, color, song.
Barnes was forty-nine, streaked with grey, heart-sick, pallid,
shuffling, timorous, sorry, and forlorn. Three decades of grease paint
had made his skin flabby; and three decades of what the grease paint
stood for had done likewise by his soul. It was thus that he drifted
from doorway to doorway in Fourteenth Street, down by the Elevated,
where dry little agents told him in dry little voices that there was
nothing for him from day to day. It was thus that he dragged his feet up
the boarding-house stairs to his skylight room, night after night,
carrying the two heartless fardels, Hope and Memory.

It was approaching a certain holiday, a holiday which came on Sunday.

"Harry," said old Tony Sanderson, after he had finished informing the
actor that there was no news for him, "why don't you do a little
press-agent work for yourself? Get your name in the paper. That might
help you get something to do."

The other listened despondently.

"Now here's a chance," went on the agent, in a confidential tone. "No
money in it, of course, but, as I said, there's a chance to get into
print. Some sort of a newsboys' benefit bunch is going to get together
Sunday night and give a little entertainment fer the kids up in Beals'
gymnasium on the Bowery. They're callin' for volunteers among the
actors. You take your monologue stunt down there and get onto the
program. The newspapers always plays up this newsboy dope strong and
you'll get a good mention sure. Clip the notices and _then_ you've got
somethin' to flash. See?"

Barnes stood uneasily by the desk. "I--I don't know, Tony," he answered.
"To tell yuh the truth, I'd be a little bit scared to try it. Yuh see,
I--well, if you wasn't an old friend of mine, I couldn't say it--but,
confidentially, Tony, I--I've kind o' lost my grip. I'm a--a back
number, Tony. I'm afraid o' them kids; they're too wise. My old act
wouldn't go." He waited, awkwardly; then, as if he hoped he were wrong,
he asked: "Would it?"

Sanderson snapped his grim eyes. "What're yuh tryin' to put it on fer,
at all, then--if yuh think it won't take with a gang of kids at a free
doin's?" Then his tone softened. "Look here, Harry. It'll only be ten or
twenty minutes. Go ahead. You'll get through all right. You ain't as
much of a dead one as you think you are."

Barnes straightened up. It was all right for him to make a slight
confession, but Sanderson had wounded his professional vanity. "A dead
one!" he exclaimed. "Certainly not. Harry Barnes a dead one! After a
thirty years' career in the companies of the best----"

The agent shoved a card in his hand and cut him off short. "Go around
there and tell 'em to put you down for a monologue." And Harry went,
with dignity and misgivings.

His misgivings were all the more increased when he saw the list of
promised performers: La Belle Marie, the famous little toe dancer in her
attractive transformations; the Brothers Zincatello, Risley experts at
the Hippodrome; Julian Jokes, "in his inimitable Hebrew monologue"; the
Seven Sebastians, the world's most marvelous Herculean acrobatic
performers; Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne, Prima Donna
and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the
Palace Theater, London; and a dozen more of the younger and more popular
people of the stage, all adorned, with adjectives and hyperbole. Down at
the bottom of the list with a trembling pencil he wrote: "Harry Barnes,
Singing and Talking." Then he shook hands with the secretary of the
organization and walked back to his boarding-house in a mild fever of
excitement.

In his room he went eagerly about his work. He rehearsed again and again
his meager little bag of tricks, his funny Irishman, his Chinaman--no,
the Chinaman came first, because he used the queue afterward to wrap
around his chin and simulate Irish "galloways"--his Dutch comedian
monologue about married life, his old-time songs and dances. He
furbished up some old "patter" and injected new anecdotes. And this he
kept up morning and evening until the notable Sunday came.

[Illustration: "HE GRINNED AND WINKED AND FRISKED AND CAPERED"]

He was so nervous, this old actor of a thousand parts, that he could eat
no supper that night. He almost trotted to the gymnasium in his
excitement, and, though his pockets bulged with grease paint, mustaches,
wigs, and other paraphernalia, he forgot almost half of his material. At
the door he had to push his way through a wriggling, impish mass of
small boys who blocked the steps and the sidewalk. Inside the hall,
young faces packed the place to the window-sills. To the old man the
newsboys seemed as so many antagonistic bits of the younger generation,
the generation which evidently would have none of him, which relegated
him carelessly to the warehouse for old scenery and old settings.

He stood in dismay behind an extemporized "wing" and peered out at the
restless little bodies. He fancied already that he could see grins on
their sophisticated faces, ridicule in their eyes; he remembered once
hearing a gallery god shout "Twenty-three!" in the middle of an actor's
monologue, and what had then seemed humorous precocity now seemed hard,
bitter cruelty. He fumbled at his make-up in his pockets, shuffled
uneasily, and waited.

It was almost time to begin. Where were the other actors who had
promised to come? The boys out front were whistling, kicking their feet
upon the floor, clapping their hands, and shouting to one another. A
distracted official raced here and there among other officials, asking
some sort of exasperated question. Barnes could not hear what it was;
but telepathically he felt that there was a hitch in the program.

At last, after waiting a quarter of an hour, the manager stepped forward
and said:

"Boys, we had arranged a fine program for you to-night----"

"Good fer you!" yelled a voice.

The speaker held up his hand. "But it seems that actors are better
_promisers_ than they are _actors_." He smiled at his own joke, but the
audience gave one long "Aw-w-w!"

"However," he continued, "we are all here now and we intend to do the
best we can. If we make up our mind to, we can have a bully good time
just the same. We have with us at least one kind gentleman who
appreciates what a celebration like this means to the boys." ... Barnes
heard and saw things as if through a fog. The arms of the speaker were
gyrating and a voice shouted in the ear of the old actor: "What's your
name?"

"Harry Barnes," he said, moistening his lips. Nobody had shown up except
him, he kept thinking over and over to himself: nobody except him. He
had the thankless job of "opening the show."

"... Harry Barnes," echoed the speaker at the end of some sort of
practical talk concerning the newsboys' organization and its management.
"Mister Harry Barnes"--he squinted at the program--"in singing and
talking."

He turned and smiled at the old man, and to Barnes the smile seemed
diabolical. Somebody clapped him on the back. There was a hurricane of
whistles and shouts, and before he knew it he was in the middle of the
rostrum.

Mechanically he had made his old comic entrance, tripping his right toe
over his left heel, and turning to shake his fist at an imaginary enemy.
The boys, determined to be pleased, giggled appreciatively.

"How--how are you, boys?" Barnes asked, seriously.

The audience snickered with delight. He was such a funny-looking old
man!

"I hope you'll like my work," he went on, desperately, "or else we might
as well go home. I guess I'm the whole show, for a little while, at
least, as the feller said when he fell out o' the balloon." The house
roared with approval.

"Go wan, Barnesy," shouted a young pair of lungs in the front row.

He straightened up, turned his back for a moment, stuck a queer set of
mustaches on his upper lip, faced the crowd again, and began: "I was
walkin' down the street the other day when my friend J. Pierpoint Morgan
stepped up to me an' says, 'Barney, my boy'"....

The show had begun. Harry Barnes, singing and talking, had opened his
carefully rehearsed bag of tricks.

There is some peculiar psychology about humor. If people make up their
minds that they are going to laugh and that a performance is bound to be
funny, nothing on earth can keep them from enjoying themselves. The most
serious remark will be greeted with howls of approval; the most ancient
joke takes on a novel and present sprightliness. In the slang of the
stage, Barnes' line of patter took.

Four hundred boys simpered, smirked, grinned, giggled, tittered,
chuckled, and guffawed. A wine of merriment flushed the crowd and
mounted to the old mummer's brain and heart. He skipped and danced and
sang; he went through all the drollery and tomfoolery, all the old comic
business he could recall.

The children nudged each other, dug their fists into each other, and
cheered: "Oh, you Barnesy!" "Kill it, Kid!" "Whatcha know about dat!"
"Sand it down, Barnesy!" The old-timer was doing the famous lock-step
jig he had done with Pat Rooney in "Patrice" fifteen or twenty years
before. It was so old that it was new. Encore followed encore. The
perspiration cascaded through his pores; he grinned and winked and
frisked and capered. They would not let him stop. At the end of
twenty-five minutes he bowed himself off the stage, and still they
called him back. When he gave them, for the "call," the Little Johnny
Dugan pantomime from "The Rainmakers," the East Side children, born
since the day of such things, were suffocated with delight.

    What did Dugan do to him?
    --They say he was untrue to him.
    Did Dugan owe him money?
    --No; he stole McCarthy's wife!
    Who? Little Johnny Dugan?

sang Barnes with a quizzical flirt of his head; and lungs that were wont
to fill the city streets with news could not even gasp for laughter.

The secretary of the organization followed with a speech about future
entertainments; another official read a letter from a prominent
financier promising the boys a swimming-pool and a half dozen summer
excursions.

"Somebody bang de box!" suggested a voice, after a pause.

Nobody could--except Barnes; and he volunteered. The whole affair was
now like one big family circle, each one secure in the amity of the
other, and when the old man sat down at the cracked piano, he sang as if
he were singing to himself, easily and without restraint. A quiet held
the house, and even the children were touched; for Harry Barnes was
quavering through the simple lines of "Should Auld Acquaintance Be
Forgot." After that he gave them the Lullaby Song from "Erminie," and
somehow it did not at all appear incongruous that a careworn mimic of
fifty should be singing to careworn workingmen of ten, down on the
Bowery, in a gymnasium, a verse about pretty little eyelids and sleeping
darlings. The world, fortunately, is not always with us; and the song
ended in a silent applause.

For two hours the entertainment went on, speeches and official plans
interspersed with the antics of Barnes.

[Illustration: "'OH, YOU DIVVIL, YOU! YOU OLD, BLATHERSKITING DIVVIL'"]

Was there anything he could not do? He mimicked birds and animals; he
imitated a wheezy phonograph playing "When We Were a Couple of Kids"; he
recited "The Raven" and "Paul Revere's Ride"; he gave a cutting from
Dickens and one from Sheridan Knowles; he showed how Joe Jefferson
played Rip Van Winkle, how Sol Smith Russell did "A Poor Relation."

And all through his soul and body, as he watched his haphazard audience
follow him in his moods and changes, ran the quiet magic of Art
Satisfied. It is a noble braggart madness, this glorification of a cheap
art by an old actor.

"Barnes, my boy," he said to himself, with a glow of rapid blood, "you
have not lost them yet! See them laugh with you! Feel them cry! What
does it matter if you eat watery oatmeal and live in a skylight room;
are you not an artist, a resonant instrument of poetry and music and
mirth, a true actor of the best parts? You are; and these are matters of
the undying soul. A boarding-house is a vulgar, temporal thing. You were
right to come here to-night, and do this thing without pay, for Art's
sake. You uphold the honor of a calling which is founded upon Art. And,
oh, most of all, you have not lost your power, you have not outlived
your time! Sanderson intimated that you were a dead one--very well,
to-morrow you shall triumphantly cut the acquaintance of Sanderson! To
have lived until this evening before the youth of this land; to have
caught the right intonation, the proper gesture; to have swept through
the hearts of your hearers like a vibration of music--this is to have
transcended, this is to have justified yourself! And justified yourself
to whom? To Sanderson? To the world? No! You have justified Harry Barnes
to Harry Barnes! You carry this human throng over the footlights and
into your soul with a Chinaman's queue and a putty nose. Your Art is
still that fine, secure Art which you have carried in your memory as you
traversed dingy stairways on Fourteenth Street. Barnes, you live, you
act, you accomplish! Bravo!"

He shook hands abstractedly all around when the affair came to a close.
He remembered bundling his make-up and trinkets into a piece of
newspaper and tucking it under his arm. A pleased face presented itself
at one time before his eyes and a voice said, confidentially, "Mr.
Barnes, I congratulate you; and the dramatic critic of the _Star_ was
here to-night."

He found himself at last out in the cool darkness of the street, and he
had to stop a moment to think which way his boarding-house lay. Then he
walked home, to save carfare. All the way up the silent streets his
brain sang with triumph. His blood jumped in gladness; he could hardly
keep from running. He declaimed aloud bits of Shakespeare, tag ends of
poems; he snapped his fingers and flung out his arms in sheer excess of
enthusiasm. He smiled, threw back his head, even made faces at the
passersby. He boomed into a solo from an opera, and kicked his foot at a
cigar stub on the sidewalk. And had anybody wished to observe when he
reached his house, the spectacle would have presented itself of a
caricature, funny-paper barn-stormer tramping merrily up the rattling
stairs and humming, "The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, have
nothing to do with the case."

All the next day he did not leave his room, save at meal times; for he
wished to be alone and hug his exultation. To the four flat walls he
repeated snatches of the things he had done the night before; up and
down the rag carpet he smirked and grimaced and laughed and jigged. He
sang the songs that had "taken" so well. He went through certain
gestures and then deliberately exaggerated them, in a high good-humor.
He was as young again as on the day when he had signed his first
contract. He puffed out his chest, looked at himself in the glass with
mock seriousness, and then, when the pent-up good feeling burst out in
his merry eye, he winked it gleefully and said: "Oh, you divvil, you!
You old blatherskiting divvil!"

At half-past four he went down to the corner and bought a copy of the
_Star_, the late edition which had the dramatic news in it.

There it was! He felt like jumping up in the air and whooping the length
of the street. On the editorial page it was. His name was in the
headlines! Beneath, in the article itself, almost every other word
seemed to be Barnes. It praised him here, it admired him there, it
thanked him, it congratulated him, it asserted that he had saved the
night for four hundred newsboys. He was so anxious to read it through
and to read it fast that he skipped from paragraph to paragraph. There
was over a column of it! He hurried back up to the room; and then
regretted that he had not stopped to buy more copies of the paper. He
locked the door and spread the paper out on the little center-table. His
heart and breath almost stopped as he read the good words slowly
through. When he had finished, he threw the paper aside and bounded into
the middle of the room.

"Press agent, hey?" he laughed. "Press agent! I guess yes! A small
matter of a column and a quarter; that's all. _Only_ a column and a
quarter about Harry Barnes! Wonder what Sanderson will think about that?
Wonder if he won't get me something to do? Oh, no; I guess not. A column
and a quarter!"

He sat down again and smoothed out the paper before him. This time he
began noticing little niceties of the critic's phrasing ...
"entertaining, not to say pathetic rendition," etc., etc.... "_Not_ to
say?" Funny; look at it a moment, and it seems to mean it wasn't
pathetic. But here it said: "Infectious and heart-tickling old-time
Irish humor" ... "excellent characterization of Uriah Heep" ... and so
on.

[Illustration: "HE SAT STARING INTO THE BLANKNESS OF THE LITTLE ROOM"]

After a few minutes he ceased reading and sat, picking at the edge of
the paper, staring into the blankness of the little room. He stayed thus
immovable for a long, long time, and then slowly the tears slipped
across his cheeks, down on the forgotten "notice," his throat ached with
a tender sobbing, and he bowed his head into the newspaper.

He was thinking of the children; he had made them laugh and cry. And
this was the thrill, once more, of the singer's heart.

[Illustration: THE REPUDIATION OF JOHNSON'S POLICY

BY

CARL SCHURZ]

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

In consequence of the threatening situation which the President's
reactionary policy had precipitated, the belief grew stronger and
stronger in the Northern country that the predominance of the Republican
party was--and would be for a few years, at least--necessary for the
safety and the honor of the Republic; and steps taken to insure that
predominance, even such as would have in less critical times evoked
strong criticism, were now looked upon with seductive leniency of
judgment. Mr. Stockton of New Jersey was unseated in the Senate upon
grounds which would hardly pass muster in ordinary times, to make room
for a Republican successor, and even Mr. Fessenden approved the
transaction. Advantage was taken in the same body of the sickness or
casual absence of some Democratic senator to rush through a vote when a
two-thirds majority was required to kill a veto; and other proceedings
were resorted to at a pinch which were hardly compatible with the famous
"courtesy of the Senate." But there was more thorough and lasting work
to be done to prepare for the full restoration of the States lately in
rebellion. The Republican majority was by no means of one mind as to the
constitutional status of the communities that had been in insurrection
against the National Government. I have already spoken of the theory of
State-suicide advanced by Mr. Stevens and a comparatively small school
of extremists. The theory most popular with most of the Republicans,
which was finally formulated by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction,
was that the rebel States had not been out of the Union, but had lost
their working status inside of the Union, and had to be restored to
their regular constitutional relations to the Union by action of
Congress, upon such conditions as Congress might deem proper.

To meet the dangers which so far had become visible on the horizon, the
Joint Committee on Reconstruction devised the Fourteenth Amendment to
the Constitution, which was long and laboriously debated in both Houses.
In the form in which it was finally adopted it declared (1) that all
persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the
United States and of the States in which they reside, and that no State
shall make or enforce any law abridging the privileges or immunities of
citizens, nor deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without
due process of law, nor deny to any person the equal protection of the
laws; (2) that if in any State the right to vote at any election for
the choice of national or State officers is denied or in any way
abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the
basis of representation in Congress or the electoral college shall be
reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall
bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in
such State; (3) that no person who had taken part in the rebellion,
having previously, as a national or State officer, military or civil,
sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, shall be a
Senator or Representative in Congress or hold any office, civil or
military, under the United States, or any State, unless relieved of that
disability by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress; (4) that the
validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be
questioned, nor shall any debt or obligation contracted in aid of
rebellion, or any claim for emancipated slaves be paid.

_The Fourteenth Amendment_

Thus the Fourteenth Amendment stopped short of the extension of the
suffrage to negroes--a subject which many Republicans were still afraid
to touch directly. But by implication it punished the States denying
that extension by reducing the basis of representation; it excluded from
office, unless relieved of the disability by a two-thirds vote of
Congress, the most influential class of those who had taken an active
part in the rebellion; and it safeguarded the public debt. With only one
of its provisions serious fault could be found;--not with that which
guaranteed to the freedmen the essential civil rights of free men, nor
with that which excluded the freedmen from the basis of
representation--so long as they were not permitted to vote. Only the
advocates of negro suffrage might logically have objected to this
clause; inasmuch as it by implication recognized the right of a State to
exclude the colored people from the suffrage if the State paid a certain
penalty for such exclusion. Neither could the clause safeguarding the
public debt and prohibiting the payment of debts incurred in aid of the
rebellion be objected to. The really exceptionable provision was that
which excluded so large a class of Southern men from public office, and
just that class with which a friendly understanding was most desirable.
The provision that their disqualification could be removed by a
two-thirds vote in each House of Congress mended the mischief thus done
a little, but not enough for the public good.

It was not expressly enacted, but it was generally understood, that
those of the States lately in rebellion, which ratified the Fourteenth
Amendment, would thereby qualify themselves for full restoration in the
Union. Tennessee, where a faction of the Union party hostile to
President Johnson had gained the ascendency, did so, and was accordingly
fully restored by the admission to their seats in Congress of its
Senators and Representatives. The full restoration of the other late
rebel States would probably have been expedited in the same way, had
they followed the example of Tennessee. But President Johnson, as became
publicly known in one or two instances, obstinately dissuaded them from
doing so, and the fight went on. He also vetoed a second Freedmen's
Bureau bill in which some of the provisions he had objected to in his
veto of the first were remedied. But things had now come to such a pass
between Congress and the President that his veto messages were hardly
considered worth listening to, but were promptly overruled almost
without debate by two-thirds votes in each House.

_A Campaign to Destroy a President_

Under such circumstances the Congressional election of 1866 came on. The
people were to pronounce judgment between the President and Congress.
The great quarrel had created excitement so intense as to affect men's
balance of mind. About the time of the assembling of Congress Mr.
Preston King of New York (the same rotund gentleman with whom, in the
National Convention of 1860, I conducted Mr. Ashmun to the chair), who
had been a Senator of the United States and had been appointed Collector
of Customs by President Johnson, committed suicide by jumping into the
North River from a ferry-boat. He had been a Republican of the radical
type, and when he took the office he supposed the President to be of the
same mind; but Mr. Johnson's course distressed him so much that he
became melancholy; his brain gave way, and he sought relief in death.
Another suicide which greatly startled the country a few months later,
that of Senator Lane of Kansas, was attributed to a similar cause. "Jim"
Lane had been one of the most famous free-State fighters in Kansas
Territory. Since then he was ranked among the extreme anti-slavery men
and as a Senator he was counted upon as a firm opponent of President
Johnson's policy. To the astonishment of everybody he voted against the
Civil Rights bill. This somewhat mysterious change of front, which
nobody seemed able satisfactorily to explain, cost him his confidential
intercourse with his former associates in the Senate, and brought upon
him stinging manifestations of disapproval from his constituents. He was
reported to have expressed profound repentance of what he had done and
finally made away with himself as one lost to hope. He was still in the
full vigor of manhood--only fifty-one years old--when he sought the
grave.

[Illustration: JOHN POTTER STOCKTON

THE DEMOCRATIC SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY WHO WAS UNSEATED IN THE SENATE OF
1866 TO MAKE ROOM FOR A REPUBLICAN SUCCESSOR. HE WAS LATER REELECTED TO
THE SENATE]

The campaign of 1866 was remarkable for its heat and bitterness. In
canvasses carried on for the purpose of electing a President, I had seen
more enthusiasm, but in none so much animosity and bad blood as in this,
an incidental object of which was politically to destroy a president.
Andrew Johnson had not only manifested a disposition to lean upon the
Democratic party in the pursuit of his policy, but he had also begun to
dismiss public officers who refused to coöperate with him politically
and to put in their places men who adhered to him. This touched partisan
spirit in an exceedingly sensitive spot. The so-called "bread-and-butter
brigade" was looked down upon with a contempt that could hardly be
expressed in words.

_Killing of Negroes at Memphis and New Orleans_

But there were more serious things to inflame the temper of the North.
The Southern whites again proved themselves their own worst enemies.
Early in May news came from Memphis of riots in which twenty-four
negroes were killed and one white man was wounded. The conclusion lay
near and was generally accepted that the whites had been the aggressors
and the negroes the victims. In the last days of July more portentous
tidings arrived from New Orleans. An attempt was made by Union men to
revive the constitutional convention of 1864 for the purpose of
remodeling the constitution of the State. The attempt was of
questionable legality, but, if wrong, it could easily have been foiled
by legal and peaceable means. The municipal government of New Orleans
was in possession of the ex-Confederates. It resolved that the meeting
of the remnant of the convention should not be held. When it did meet,
the police, consisting in an overwhelming majority of ex-Confederate
soldiers, aided by a white mob, broke into the hall and fired upon those
assembled there. The result was thirty-seven negroes killed and one
hundred and nineteen wounded, and three of the white Union men killed
and seventeen wounded, against one of the assailants killed and ten
wounded. General Sheridan, the commander of the Department, telegraphed
to General Grant: "It was no riot; it was an absolute massacre by the
police which was not excelled in murderous cruelty by that of Fort
Pillow. It was a murder which the Mayor and the police of this city
perpetrated without the shadow of necessity." A tremor of horror and
rage ran over the North. People asked one another: "Does this mean that
the rebellion is to begin again?" I heard the question often.

The Administration felt the blow, and to neutralize its effects a
national convention of its adherents, North and South, planned by
Thurlow Weed and Secretary Seward, was to serve as the principal means.
This "National Union Convention" met in Philadelphia on August 14th. It
was respectably attended in point of character as well as of numbers. It
opened its proceedings with a spectacular performance which under
different conditions might have struck the popular imagination
favorably. The delegates marched into the Convention Hall in pairs, one
from the South arm in arm with one from the North, Massachusetts and
South Carolina leading. But with the Memphis riot and the New Orleans
"massacre" and Andrew Johnson's sinister figure in the background, the
theatrical exhibition of restored fraternal feeling, although calling
forth much cheering on the spot, fell flat, and even became the subject
of ridicule, since it earned for the meeting the derisive nickname of
the "arm-in-arm convention." The proceedings were rather dull, and much
was made by the Republicans of the fact that the Chairman, Senator
Doolittle from Wisconsin, was careful not to let Southern members say
much lest they say _too_ much. It was also noticed and made much of that
among the members of the convention the number of men supposed to curry
favor with the Administration for the purpose of getting office--men
belonging to the "bread-and-butter-brigade"--was conspicuously large.
Among the resolutions passed by the convention was one declaring slavery
abolished and the emancipated negro entitled to equal protection in
every right of person and property, and another heartily endorsing
President Johnson's reconstruction policy.

No doubt many of the respectable and patriotic men who attended that
convention thought they had done very valuable work for the general
pacification by getting their Southern friends publicly to affirm that
slavery was dead never to be revived, and that the civil rights of the
freedmen were entitled to equal protection and would have it. But the
effect of such declarations upon the popular mind at the North was not
as great as had been expected. Such affirmations by respectable Southern
gentlemen, who were perfectly sincere, had been heard before. In fact,
almost everybody in the South was ready to declare himself likewise, and
with equal sincerity, as to the abolition of the old form of chattel
slavery. But the question of far superior importance was, what he would
put in the place of the old form of chattel slavery. _There_ was the
rub, and this had come to be well understood at the North in the light
of the reports from the South, which the advocates of President
Johnson's policy could not deny nor obscure. The moral effect of the
National Union Convention was therefore very feeble.

[Illustration: _From the collection of Joseph Keppler_

SENATOR CARL SCHURZ

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ABOUT 1879]

_Johnson "Swings Around the Circle"_

If the members of the National Union Convention thought that their
conciliatory utterances would pour oil on the angry waves of the
campaign, they reckoned without their host. When a committee appointed
for that purpose presented to President Johnson a copy of its
proceedings, there was rather a note of defiance to his opponents, than
of conciliation, in his response. "We have witnessed in one department
of the government every endeavor to prevent the restoration of peace,
harmony, and union," he said. "We have seen hanging upon the verge of
the government, as it were, a body called, or which assumes to be, the
Congress of the United States, while, in fact, it is a Congress of only
a part of the United States. We have seen a Congress in a minority
assume to exercise power which, allowed to be consummated, would result
in despotism or monarchy itself." Here was again the thinly veiled
threat that, because certain States were not represented in it, the
validity of the acts of Congress might be attacked. But worse was to
follow. It is a well-known fact that presidents, under the influence of
the Washington atmosphere, are apt to become victims of the delusion
that they are idolized by the American people. Even John Tyler is said
to have thought so. It may have been under a similar impression that
President Johnson, who had great confidence in the power of his
influence over the masses when he personally confronted them, accepted
an invitation requesting his presence at the unveiling of a Douglas
statue in Chicago, and he made this an occasion for a "presidential
progress" through some of the States. He started late in August. Several
members of his cabinet, Seward among others, accompanied him, and so did
General Grant and Admiral Farragut, by command, to give additional
luster to the appearance of the chief.

[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of the New York Customs House_

SENATOR PRESTON KING

WHOM PRESIDENT JOHNSON APPOINTED COLLECTOR OF THE PORT OF NEW YORK. HIS
SUICIDE IN 1865 WAS ATTRIBUTED TO WORRY OVER THE PRESIDENT'S
RECONSTRUCTION POLICY]

His journey, the famous "swinging around the circle,"--a favorite phrase
of his to describe his fight against the Southern enemies of the Union,
the Secessionists, at one time, and against the Northern disunionists,
the radical Republicans, at another--was a series of the most disastrous
exhibitions. At Philadelphia he was received with studied coldness. At
New York he had an official reception, and he used the occasion to
rehearse his often-told story of his wonderful advancement from the
position of alderman in his native town to the presidency of the United
States, with some insignificant remarks about his policy attached. At
Cleveland he appeared before a large audience, according to abundant
testimony, in a drunken condition. Indeed, the character of his speech
cannot be explained in any other way. He descended to the lowest tone of
partizan stump speaking. He bandied epithets with some of his hearers
who interrupted him. The whole speech was a mixture of inane drivel and
reckless aspersion. His visit at Chicago passed without any particular
scandal. But the speech he made at St. Louis fairly capped the climax.
He accused the Republicans in Congress of substantially having planned
the New Orleans massacre. He indulged himself in a muddled tirade about
Judas, Christ, and Moses. He declared that all his opponents were after
was to hold on to the offices; but that he would kick them out; that
they wanted to get rid of him, but that he defied them. And so on. At
Indianapolis a disorderly crowd hooted him down and would not let him
speak at all.

[Illustration: _Lent by the Century Co._

SENATOR JAMES LANE

ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS FREE-STATE FIGHTERS IN KANSAS TERRITORY. HIS
DEFECTION TO THE SIDE OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON WAS BITTERLY CRITICISED BY
HIS CONSTITUENTS, AND WAS THOUGHT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS SUICIDE IN
1866]

_New Congress Overwhelmingly Anti-Johnson_

He returned to Washington an utterly discomfited and disgraced man,
having gone out to win popular support, and having earned only popular
disgust. The humorists, pictorial as well as literary, pounced upon the
"swinging around the circle" as a fruitful subject for caricature or
satire, turning serious wrath into a bitter laugh. Andrew Johnson became
the victim not only of detestation but of ridicule.

The campaign was then--about the middle of September--virtually decided.
There was no longer any doubt that the election would not only preserve,
but materially increase, the anti-Johnson majority in Congress. But
before President Johnson started on his ill-starred journey,
arrangements had been made for the other national conventions. One of
them was designed to bring Southern loyalists, that is, Southern men who
had stood loyally by the National Government, together with Northern
Republicans. It met at Philadelphia on the 3rd of September. Senator
Zachariah Chandler and myself attended it as delegates sent there by the
Republicans of Michigan. It was a large gathering, the roll of which
bore many distinguished names from all parts of the country. Southern
members having been permitted to say but very little in the Johnson
convention a fortnight before, it was a clever stroke of policy on the
part of our managers to give the floor to the Southern loyalists
altogether. They availed themselves of the opportunity to lay before the
people of the country an account of their experiences and sufferings,
since the promulgation of the Johnson policy, which could not fail to
stir the popular heart. Their recitals of the atrocities committed in
the South were indeed horrible. Over a thousand Union citizens had been
murdered there since the surrender of Lee and in no case had the
assassins been brought to judgment. But after Mr. Johnson's "swing
around the circle" no further exertions could have saved his cause, and
no further exertion could have very much augmented the majority against
him. I am convinced he would have been beaten without his disgraceful
escapade. But his self-exhibitions made his defeat overwhelming. The
Republicans won in one hundred and forty-three Congressional districts,
the Democrats in only forty-nine. President Johnson was more at the
mercy of Congress than ever.

During the canvass I was somewhat in demand as a speaker and addressed
large meetings at various places. One of my speeches, delivered at
Philadelphia on the 8th of September, was printed in pamphlet form and
widely circulated as a campaign document. I have read it
again--thirty-nine years after its delivery--and I may say that after
the additional light and the experience which this lapse of time has
given us, I would now draw the diagnosis of the situation then existing
substantially as I did in that speech--barring some, not
many--extravagances of oratorical coloring, and the treatment of the
disqualification clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

_The Movement Toward Negro Suffrage_

It was in this campaign that the matter of negro suffrage was first
discussed on the hustings with a certain frankness. Efforts have since
been made, and are now being made, to make the Southern people
believe--and, I deeply regret to say, many of them actually do
believe--that the introduction of negro suffrage was a device of some
particularly malignant and vindictive radicals, to subject the South to
the extreme of distress and humiliation. Nothing could be farther from
the truth. Admitting that there were people in the North who, before the
passions of the War had subsided, wished to see the rebels and their
sympathizers and abettors in some way punished for what they had done,
negro suffrage never was thought of as a punitive measure. I may say
that in all my intercourse with various classes of people--and my
opportunities were large--I have never heard it mentioned or suggested,
still less advocated, as a punitive measure. It never was in itself
popular with the masses--reason enough for the ordinary politicians to
be afraid of openly favoring it. There were only two classes of men who
at all thought of introducing it generally; those whom, without meaning
any disparagement, I would for the sake of convenience call the
doctrinaires,--men who, like Mr. Sumner, would insist as a general
principle that the negro, being a man, was as a matter of right as much
entitled to the suffrage as the white man; and those who, after a
faithful and somewhat perplexed wrestle with the complicated problem of
reconstruction, finally landed--or, it might almost be said, were
stranded--at the conclusion that to enable the negro to protect his own
rights as a free man by the exercise of the ballot was after all the
simplest way out of the tangle, and at the same time the most in
accordance with our democratic principles of government.

[Illustration: SENATOR ZACHARIAH CHANDLER

WHO WAS SENT, TOGETHER WITH CARL SCHURZ, TO THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION
OF 1866, BY THE REPUBLICANS OF MICHIGAN]

This view of the matter grew rapidly in popular appreciation as the
results of reconstruction on the Johnson plan became more and more
unsatisfactory. It gained very much in strength when it appeared that
the tremendous rebuke administered to the President's policy by the
Congressional elections of 1866 had not produced any effect upon Mr.
Johnson's mind, but that, as his annual message delivered on December
3rd showed, he was doggedly bent upon following his course. It was still
more strengthened when all the Southern legislatures set up under the
President's plan, save that of Tennessee, rejected the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution,--some unanimously, or nearly so,--and
even with demonstrations of contemptuous defiance. Then the question was
asked at the North with great pertinency: Are we to understand that the
white people of the States lately in rebellion will not agree that all
persons born or naturalized in the United States shall be
constitutionally recognized as citizens entitled in their civil rights
to the equal protection of the laws? That those States insist, not only
that the colored people shall not have the right of suffrage, but that
those people so excluded from the franchise shall even serve to increase
the basis of representation in favor of the whites--or in other words,
that the white people of the South shall come out of the rebellion
politically stronger than they were when they went into it? That all
those who engaged in the rebellion and fought to destroy the Union shall
be entitled to participate on even more favorable terms than ourselves
in the government of the same Union which but yesterday they sought to
destroy? That they refuse to safeguard the public debt incurred for
saving the Union and wish to keep open the possibility of an assumption
of the debts incurred by the rebel States for destroying the Union?

The fact was not overlooked that the great mass of the Southern negroes
were grossly ignorant and in other respects ill-fitted for the exercise
of political privileges. Many who then favored negro suffrage would have
greatly preferred its gradual introduction, first limiting it, as Mr.
Lincoln suggested to Governor Hahn of Louisiana, to those who had served
as soldiers in the Union army and those who were best fitted for it by
intelligence and education. But this would have reduced the negro vote
to so small a figure as to render it insufficient to counteract or
neutralize the power of the reactionary element. To that end the whole
vote was required; and for that reason it was demanded, in spite of the
imperfections it was known to possess and of the troubles it
threatened--which, however, at that period were much underestimated, as
is apt to be the case under similar circumstances.

_Reconstruction Under Military Control_

When the session of Congress opened on the 3rd of December, it was
virtually certain that unrestricted negro suffrage would come and that
President Johnson's reconstruction policy would be swept out of the way.
The Republican majority without delay passed a bill extending the
suffrage to the negroes in the District of Columbia, which then had a
municipal government of its own. The President put his veto on the bill,
but the veto was promptly overruled by two-thirds majorities in both
Houses. Then followed a series of legislative measures designed
substantially to substitute for the reconstruction work done by the
President a method of reconstruction based upon universal suffrage
including the negro vote, and to strip the President as much as possible
of all power to interfere. The first, upon the ground that life and
property were not safe under the existing provisional governments,
divided the late rebel States into five military divisions, each to be
under the command of a general officer who was to have the power to
declare martial law and to have offenders tried by military commission,
as the condition of public safety and order might seem to them to
require. Under their protection conventions were to be elected by
universal suffrage including the negro vote and excluding the
disqualified "rebel" vote, to frame new State constitutions containing
provision for the same sort of universal suffrage, such constitutions to
be subject to the approval of the people of the respective States and of
Congress. The State officers to be elected under these new constitutions
were, of course, to be elected by the same electorate, and the States
were to be regarded as entitled to representation in Congress, after
having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the National Constitution,
and after that Amendment had been ratified by a sufficient number of the
States generally to make it a valid part of the Constitution. A
supplementary reconstruction act gave the military commanders very
extensive control over the elections to be held, as to the registration
of voters, the mode of holding the elections, the appointment of
election officers, the canvassing of results, and the reporting of such
results to the President and through him to Congress. In order to strip
President Johnson of all power to interfere with the execution of this
measure beyond the appointment of the commanders of the various military
divisions, a provision was introduced in the Army Appropriation bill
which substantially ordained that all military orders and instructions
should be issued through the General of the Army (General Grant), who
was to have his headquarters at Washington; and that all orders and
instructions issued otherwise should be null and void. And when the
generals commanding the several divisions had expressed some doubt as
to the interpretation of some provisions of the Reconstruction Act, and
the President had issued instructions concerning those points which
displeased Congress, another act was passed, which, by way of
explanation of the meaning of its predecessors, still further enlarged
the powers of the military commanders and made them virtually rulers
over everything and everybody in those States. In the mean time, to tie
the President's hands still farther, the Tenure of Office Act had been
passed, which was to curtail or hamper President Johnson's power to
dismiss office-holders from their places so as to reduce as much as
possible his facilities for punishing the opponents and for rewarding
the friends of his policy, and thus, as it would now be called, for
building up an office-holders' machine for his use.

_The Public Fear of Johnson_

President Johnson in every case promptly vetoed the bills objectionable
to him or fulminated his protests against what he considered
unwarrantable encroachments upon his constitutional prerogatives. Some
of his messages, reported to have been written either by Mr. Seward or
by Mr. Jeremiah Black, a man of brilliant abilities, were strong in
argument as well as eloquent in expression. But they were not listened
to--much less considered. Mr. Johnson had personally discredited himself
to such a degree that the connection of his personality with anything he
advocated fatally discredited his cause. The air, not only in
Washington, but throughout the country, was buzzing with rumors of
iniquities which Andrew Johnson was meditating and would surely attempt
if he were not disarmed. He was surely plotting a _coup d'état_; he had
already slyly tried to get General Grant out of the way by sending him
on a trumped-up diplomatic errand to Mexico. When, therefore, the news
came from Washington that Andrew Johnson was to be impeached, to deprive
him of his office, it was not only welcomed by reckless partizanship,
but as everybody who has lived through those times will remember, it
struck a popular chord. There was a widespread feeling among
well-meaning and sober people that the country was really in some sort
of peril, and that it would be a good thing to get rid of that dangerous
man in the presidential chair.

But for this vague feeling of uneasiness approaching genuine alarm, I
doubt whether Congress would ever have ventured upon the tragi-comedy of
the impeachment.

It explains also the fact that so many lawyers in Congress, as well as
in the country, although they must have seen the legal weakness of the
case against Andrew Johnson, still labored so hard to find some point
upon which he might be convicted. It was for political, not for legal
reasons that they did so--not reasons of political partizanship, but the
higher political reason that they thought the public interest made the
removal of Andrew Johnson from his place of power eminently desirable. I
have to confess that I leaned somewhat to that opinion myself--not that
I believed in the sinister revolutionary designs of Mr. Johnson, but
because I thought that the presence of Mr. Johnson in the presidential
office encouraged among the white people of the South hopes and
endeavors which, the longer they were indulged in, the more grievous the
harm they would do to both races. It can indeed not be said that
President Johnson failed to execute the reconstruction laws enacted by
Congress by refusing to perform the duties imposed upon him, such as the
appointment of the commanders of military divisions. He even effectively
opposed, through his able and accomplished Attorney-General, Mr.
Stanbery, the attempts of two Southern governors to stop the enforcement
of the Reconstruction Act by the legal process of injunction. But the
mere fact that he was believed to favor the reactionary element in the
South and would do all in his power to let it have its way was in itself
an influence constantly inflaming the passions kindled by mischievous
hopes.

_The Fatal Bungling of Reconstruction_

The condition of things in the South had become deplorable in the
extreme. Had the reconstruction measures enacted by Congress, harsh as
they were, been imposed upon the Southern people immediately after the
War, when the people were stunned by their overwhelming defeat, and when
there was still some apprehension of bloody vengeance to be visited upon
the leaders of the rebellion--as was the case, for instance, in Hungary
in 1849 after the collapse of the great insurrection--those measures
would have been accepted as an escape from something worse. Even negro
suffrage in a qualified form, as General Lee's testimony before the
Reconstruction Committee showed, might then have been accepted as a
peace-offering.

But the propitious moment was lost. Instead of gently persuading the
Southerners, as Lincoln would have done, that the full restoration of
the States lately in rebellion would necessarily depend upon the
readiness and good faith with which they accommodated themselves to the
legitimate results of the War, and that there were certain things which
the victorious Union government was bound to insist upon, not in a
spirit of vindictiveness, but as a simple matter of honor and
duty--instead of this President Johnson told them that their instant
restoration to their old status in the Union, that is, to complete
self-government and to participation in the National Government, on
equal terms with the other States, had become their indefeasible
constitutional right as soon as the insurgents laid down their arms and
went through the form of taking an oath of allegiance, and that those
who refused to recognize the immediate validity of that right were no
better than traitors and public enemies. Nothing could have been more
natural, under such circumstances, than that the master class in the
South should have seen a chance to establish something like
semi-slavery, and that, pressed by their economic perplexities, they
should have eagerly grasped at that chance. No wonder that what should
have been as gentle as possible a transition from one social state into
another degenerated into an angry political brawl, which grew more and
more furious as it went on. No wonder, finally, that when at last the
Congressional reconstruction policy, which at first might have been
quietly submitted to as something that might have been worse, and that
could not be averted, came at last in the midst of that brawl, it was
resented in the South as an act of diabolical malice and tyrannical
oppression not to be endured. And the worst outcome of all was, that
many white people of the South who had at first cherished a kindly
feeling for the negroes on account of their "fidelity" during the War,
now fell to hating the negroes as the cause of all their woes; that, on
the other hand, the negroes, after all their troubles, raised to a
position of power, now were tempted to a reckless use of that power; and
that a selfish partizan spirit growing up among the Republican majority,
instead of endeavoring to curb that tendency, encouraged, or, at least,
tolerated it for party advantage.

I have to confess that I took a more hopeful view of the matter at the
time, for I did not foresee the mischievous part which selfish partizan
spirit would play in that precarious situation. I trusted that the
statesmen of the Republican party would prove clear-sighted enough to
perceive in time the danger of excesses which their reconstruction
policy would bring to the South, and that they would be strong enough in
influence to combat that danger. Nothing could have been farther from my
mind than the expectation that before long it would be my lot to take an
active part in that combat on the most conspicuous political stage in
the country.

THE THIRTEENTH MOVE

BY ALBERTA BANCROFT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY M. J. SPERO

Ikey stood on the street corner and fingered her veil to keep passersby
from seeing her lips tremble. She was sure that she was going to cry
right there in the open, and she was furious about it, because she did
not approve of weepy females.

"If you dare," she whispered fiercely, "if you dare, I'll--I'll--you
shan't have that nickel's worth of peanut candy, or those currant buns,
either."

This threat proving effective, she turned, head held high, and entered
the bakery.

There was the usual Saturday afternoon crowd, jostling on the shoddy
thoroughfare. To-day the jostling was intensified; for the car strike
was on in full blast, feeling ran high, and demonstrations were being
made against the company. Now and again a car passed slowly up or down
the street, drays and express wagons blocking its progress wherever
possible, scab conductor and motorman hooted at by San Francisco men and
beplumed ladies for their pains.

Ikey looked at the mob in disgust. Then she hurried around the corner
and away from the scene of commotion.

"And to think that it has come to this, that I can't ride up and down in
those cars all day long--_just to show 'em_."

The beach was what she really wanted--one of those little sand hummocks
with juicy plants sprawling over it, that protect one from the wind and
yet reveal beyond ravishing glimpses of cliff and breaker and sapphire
shining sea.

But the beach was not to be found in the heart of town. And she was too
tired to walk there--not having had any lunch and being very angry
besides. And she would lose her "job"--her miserable, wretched,
disgusting, good-for-nothing job (Ikey loved adjectives), if she rode.
For any and all women connected with any and all union men had been
forbidden to use the company's cars. And business houses--who had
anything to gain from it--had promised their employees instant dismissal
for even one ride. And the firm that employed Ikey would lose
three-fourths of its trade if the union boycotted it.

So the sand-dunes would have to wait. But there were some vacant lots,
backed by a scraggle of rough, red rock, only half a dozen blocks away.
If luck were with her, the loafers might be in temporary abeyance and
the refugee tents not unduly prominent.

Luck was with her. And Ikey sat down on the lea of the little cliff,
quite alone, spread out her buns,--you got three for ten cents these
catastrophe days,--and faced the situation.

The landlady had raised the rent.

Ikey could have screamed with laughter over the situation--if only the
matter were not so vital.

"This'll make the thirteenth move for you, Ikey, my love, since the
eighteenth of April--and the thirteenth move is bound to be unlucky. But
you'll have to go, sure as Fate; for you can't stand another raise. The
Wandering Jew gentleman takes the road again."

She pursed her lips as she said it. She had invented the appelation for
herself after nine moves in three months. "I don't know what his name
really was," she confessed--there was no one else to talk to, no one she
cared for, so she talked, sub voice, to herself--"but it must have been
Ikey. I'm sure it was Ikey--and that I look just like him." And deriving
much comfort from this witticism, she went on her way.

"Ikey, the Wandering Jew, on the move again," she repeated. "But where
to move _to_, that is the question. It's funny what a difference money
makes"--her eyebrows went up--"or rather, lack of it. I've never
considered that until recently."

Then her eyes fell on her shoes.

They had been very swagger little shoes in the beginning--Ikey had made
rather a specialty of footgear--but they were her "escape" shoes; and
their looks told the tale of their wanderings. Also, she had had no
others since.

She wriggled her toes.

"You'll be poking through before long, looking at the stars," she told
them severely. "Imagine your excitement."

And her suit.

[Illustration: "'I'VE BEEN FOLLOWING YOU EVER SINCE YOU LEFT YOUR
OFFICE,' HE SAID"]

Ikey looked away so as not to see the perfect cut of it, the perfect fit
of it, the utter shabbiness of it. It was her "escape" suit, too. She
had slept on the hills in it to the tune of dynamiting and the flare of
the burning city. She would never have another like it--never. For her
job----

Her job.

She leaned back suddenly and closed her eyes. Her job. The rage of this
noon was coming back again; rage, and with it a strange, new
sensation--fear. She had never known fear before, not even during the
earthquake days. "Only at the dentist's," she told herself, giggling
half hysterically behind closed lids.

And back of it all--back of the landlady's unconcealed dislike and
latest slap, back of the disintegration of a wardrobe that could not be
replaced, and the question as to whether her "job" had not become an
impossibility since to-day--and that job simply could not become an
impossibility: one had to live--back of all this was the dull hurt,
smothered and always coming again, that Bixler McFay had not taken the
trouble to look her up when his regiment came through on the way to
Manila.

"You may as well face that, too, while you're about it," Ikey observed
sarcastically. She opened her eyes with a snap and bit into the first
bun.

"The regiment was only here three days," a little voice inside of her
whispered fearfully.

"Three days!" Ikey's scorn was unbounded. "If he had cared, he could
have found you in three hours--and he always said he cared. It's a thing
you've got to live with. It's nothing so unusual. It happens every day.
Why can't you treat it like a poor relation?"

And her thoughts went back to Fort Leavenworth, and the gowns on gowns
she had worn, all burned up at the St. Francis last spring, with the
rest of her things, a week after she had reached the city; and Cousin
Mary, suave and elegant and impressive as her chaperon; and herself,
petted and made much of on all sides, and incidentally pointed out as
the richest girl on the field, and an orphan; and Bixler McFay,
handsome, brilliant, devoted, always on hand, always protesting----

A whimsical, sarcastic little smile curved her lips for a moment. The
earthquake had certainly made a difference. A vision of Cousin Mary
arose--not the suave and elegant chaperon of a wealthy young relative,
but a frightened, self-centered, middle-aged woman, who had taken the
earthquake as a personal affront put upon her by her young charge and
insisted on being the first consideration in no matter what environment
she found herself.

[Illustration: "'IT'S A DESPICABLE LETTER,' SHE TOLD HERSELF"]

Then came another vision. She recalled her parting with Bixler McFay in
the late winter, when she had left Leavenworth for the Coast, saying it
wasn't decent not to know anything about the place where all your income
came from, and he had left Leavenworth to rejoin his regiment in
Arizona. How his voice had trembled that morning as he bade her
good-bye, declaring he should always consider himself engaged to her,
even if she did not consider herself engaged to him; begging that she
wear his class pin, or at least keep it for him if she would not wear
it, because the thought of its being in her possession would comfort him
in his loneliness.

It had comforted her in those first dreadful days after the fire to
think that he was alive and on his way to her. It never entered her head
but what he would come at once: when friends were looking for friends
and enemies were succoring one another, how should he fail her?

And then--not one word. Not even an inquiry in the paper; when that was
about all the papers were made up of for days after--column after column
of addresses and inquiries, along with the death notices.

And afterwards--not one word----

II

"I won't pretend this is accidental, Miss Stanton."

Ikey looked up startled, began to curl her feet up under her skirt,
decided that it was not worth while,--he was only one of the
boarders,--and offered buns and candy with indifferent promptness.

"There's a gang of toughs coming down over the hill. Strikers, maybe. I
thought they might startle you."

He seated himself unceremoniously on a rock near by.

Ikey settled back with a little comfortable movement against her own
rock and raised her eyebrows.

"The proper thing for me to do at this stage is to inquire in a haughty
voice how you happened to know I was here."

"I followed you."

There was no hint of apology, and she looked at him more closely. She
had sat opposite him at the unesthetic boarding-house dining-table for
the past six weeks now. He ate enormously,--but in cultured wise,--never
said anything, was something over six feet tall, wore ready-made,
dust-colored clothes, and was utterly inconspicuous. "Like a big gray
wall." Just now it was the expression of his face, intangibly
different--or had she never taken the trouble to notice him
before?--that fixed her attention.

He was looking straight at her.

"I've been following you ever since you left your office," he said after
a deliberate pause; and Ikey's eyes grew large and frightened as she
took in his meaning.

"Then you saw----"

"I did." There was another pause. "It won't happen again." His tone was
quite final. "Why do you lay yourself open to that sort of thing? Don't
you know that the burnt district is no place for any woman at all these
days--not even one block of it? Why don't you ride?"

His voice was quite cross, and Ikey could have laughed aloud. This, to
her, who had the burnt district on her nerves to such an extent that she
dreamed of the brick-and-twisted-iron chaos by night--the miles of
desolation, punctuated by crumbling chimneys and tottering
walls--dreamed of it by night and turned sick at the sight of it by day.
Did this stupid hulk of a person think she _liked_ the burnt
district--and to walk there?

After all, his attitude was less funny than impertinent. She would be
angry. It was better. She would respond icily and put him in his place.

At least, such was her intention. But she discovered to her amazement
that she was trembling--her encounter of the noon was responsible for
that--and her teeth seemed inclined to hit against each other rapidly
with a little clicking noise. So it seemed on the whole more expedient
to blurt out her remarks without any attempt at frills or amplification.

"Why don't you ride?"

Ikey gathered herself together.

"My dear Mr. Hammond, there is a street car strike on here in San
Francisco. No union wagons run out this way--and I lose my position if I
use the cars."

He was welcome to that. She looked off into the distance while he
assimilated it.

"I had not thought of that," he said at last slowly. "In that case there
is but one thing to do. You must stop that work at once."

"And stand in the bread line? Now? Along with--those others?" A little
smile twisted her lips. "I should look handsome doing that."

"But surely----"

His tone was beginning to be puzzled. So was his expression. Ikey
ascertained this by allowing a glance to brush past him.

[Illustration: "'HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE I FEEL, BEING IN THIS POSITION--TO
YOU?'"]

Suddenly he had changed his position. He was beside her on the ground,
facing her, staring her out of countenance.

"We may as well get the clear of this right now----"

"It is needlessly clear to me, Mr. Hammond."

"But not to me. In the first place----"

"I will not trouble you----"

"It is no trouble. In the first place, has that fellow followed you,
spoken to you before?"

"Never--never like that."

She wondered whether he had noticed her unsuccessful effort to rise and
put an end to the interview.

"Do you know who he is?"

"He is the junior member of the firm I work for."

"_What!_ Well, I _am_ glad I smashed him." Then he added quickly, "This,
of course, puts an end to your going there, at once. You've been at it
too long anyway. It's stopped being a joke, and as a pose----"

"'Pose.'"

The intonation was subtle. A moment's bewilderment, and he burst out,
"You're not doing this because you--_have_ to?"

"That--or something."

"But--but--Good Lord, child! Where is your money?"

With pomp and ceremony--but languidly withal, for her head was beginning
to ache, and she wanted desperately to cry--she laid her purse in his
hand. But she did not look at him.

The big hand closed over the flat little thing impatiently.

"I am referring to your bank account."

"And by what right----"

"We'll settle that later. The banks have opened up again----"

"That's all I have."

"But what has become--You're not going to faint?"

"No."

"Then what has become----"

Quite against her will she was beginning to find herself faintly amused.
Of all pigheaded, impertinent people, this individual with whom she had
hardly had more than five minutes' conversation, except at meal times
during the past six weeks, was certainly the worst.

"I really must know, Miss Stanton, what has become----"

"I gave it away."

"You--gave it--_away_!" Italics could never do justice to his
intonation. He was staring at her as though he considered her demented.
"To whom?" came his indignant question.

After all, why not tell him? It was none of his business; and he was
desperately impertinent; but she was desperately forlorn; and, though it
could not better the situation to talk about it, it might better her
feelings.

She slipped farther down against her rock; and he bent forward,
listening intently.

"I gave it to--a relative. She was living with me at the time of the