University of Virginia Library

SUPREMACY

13. CHAPTER XIII
THE MAN BELOW THE SMOKE

ELINOR WREAM was standing at the gate as Victor Burleigh came striding up the street.

"Where are you going so fast, Victor?" she asked. "Everybody is in a rush this evening. We had a telegram from the East this afternoon. Uncle Joshua is very ill, and Uncle Lloyd had to get away on short notice. Old Bond Saxon went by just now, but," lowering her voice, "he was awfully drunk and slipped along like a snake."

"Have you seen Bug?" Victor asked. "Dennie says he left a little while ago to find his ball he lost out north this afternoon. He wouldn't tell where, because he had promised not to."

"No, I have not seen him. But don't be uneasy about Bug. He never plays near the river, nor the railroad tracks, and he always comes in at the right time," Elinor said, comfortingly.

"I know he always has before, but I want to find him, anyhow." The affectionate tone told Elinor what a loving guardianship was given to the unknown orphan child.

"There was a man here to see Uncle Lloyd just after he left this evening. The same man that brought a little package for you the night we came home. I suppose he comes from your part of the state out West, for he seemed to know you and Bug. He asked me if Bug ever played along the river and if he was a shy child. He was a strange-looking man, and I thought he had the cruelest face I ever saw, but I am no expert on strange faces."

Victor did not wait for another word.

"I must find Bug right away. You can't think what he is to me, Elinor," and he hurried away.

At the bend in the Walnut Vic saw Bug's little scarlet stocking cap beside the flat stone. The twilight was almost gone, but the glistening river reflected on the torn bushes above the bank-full stream.

The crushing agony of the first minutes made them seem like hours. And then the college discipline put in its work. Vic stopped and reasoned.

"Bug isn't down there. He never goes near the river. That strange man is Tom Gresh. He killed my father and he's laid a trap for me. He doesn't want to kill Bug. He wants to keep him to workout vengeance and hate on me. He says he'll send me to my father if I go near him. Well, I'm going so near he'll not doubt who I am, and I'll have Bug unharmed if I have to send Gresh where my father could not go even with water to cool his tongue. A man may fight with a man as he would fight with a beast to save himself or something dearer than himself from beastly destruction, Fenneben says. That's the battle before me now, and it's to the death."

The tiger light was in the yellow eyes as never before and the stern jaw was set, as Victor Burleigh hurried away. And this was the man who, such a little while ago, was debating with himself over the quiet possession of Bug Buler's inheritance. Truly the Mastery comes very near to such as he.

It was with tiger-like step and instinct, too, that the young man went leaping up the dark, frost-coated glen. About the mouth of the cave the blackness was appalling. It

seemed a place apart, cursed with the frown of Nature. Yet in the April time, the sweetest moments of Vic's young life had been spent in this very spot that now showed all the difference between Love and Hate.

As he neared the opening of the cavern he guarded his footsteps more carefully. The jungle beast was alert within him and the college training was giving way to the might of muscle backed by a will to win.

A dim light gleamed in the cave and he watched outside now, as Gresh on the April day had watched him inside. Down by a wood fire, whose smoke was twisting out through a crevice overhead somewhere, little Bug was sitting on Tom Gresh's big coat, the fire lighting up his tangle of red-brown curls. His big brown eyes looking up at the man crouching by the fire were eyes of innocent courage, and the expression on the sweet child-face was impenetrable.

"He's a Burleigh. He's not afraid," Vic thought, exultingly. "That's half my battle. I had it out with the rattlesnakes. I'll do better here."

At that moment the outlaw turned toward the door and leaped to his feet as Vic sprang inside.

Bug started up with outstretched arms.

"Keep out of the way, Bug," Vic cried, as the two men clinched.

And the struggle began. They were evenly matched, and both had the sinews of giants. The outlaw had the advantage of an iron strength, hardened by years of out-door life. But the college that had softened the country boy somewhat gave in return the quick judgment and superior agility of the trained power that counts against weight before the battle is over. But withal, it was terrible. One fighter was a murderer by trade, his hand steady for the blackest deeds, and here was a man he had waited long months to destroy. The other fighter was in the struggle to save a life dear to him, a life that must vindicate his conscience and preserve his soul's peace.

Across the stone-floored cave they threshed in fury, until at the farther wall Gresh flung Vic from him against the jagged rock with a force that cut a gash across the boy's head. The blood splashed on both men's faces as they renewed the strife. Then with a quick twist Burleigh threw the outlaw to the floor and held him in a clutch that weighed him down like a

ledge of rock; and it was pound for pound again.

Away from the mass of burning coals the blackness was horrible. Beyond that fire Bug sat, silent as the stone wall behind him. Gresh gained the mastery again, and with a grip on Vic's throat was about to thrust his head, face downward, into the burning embers. Vic understood and strove for his own life with a maniac's might, for he knew that one more wrench would end the thing.

"You first, and then the baby; I'll roast you both," Gresh hissed, and Vic smelled the heat of the wood flame.

But who had counted on Bug? He had watched this fearful grapple, motionless and terror-stricken, and now with a child's vision he saw what Gresh meant to do. Springing up, he caught the heavy coat on which he had been sitting and flung it on the fire, smothering the embers and putting the cavern into complete darkness.

Vic gained the vantage by this unlooked for movement and the grip shifted. The fighters fell to the floor and then began the same kind of struggle by which Burleigh had out-generaled big, unconquerable Trench one day. The two had rolled and

fought in college combat from the top of the limestone ridge to the lower campus and landed with Burleigh gripping Trench helpless to defend further. That battle was friend with friend. This battle was to the death. The blood of both men smeared the floor as they tore at each other like wild beasts, and no man could have told which oftenest had the vantage hold, nor how the strife would end. But it did end soon. The heavy coat, that had smothered the fire and saved Vic, smoldered a little, then flared into flame, lighting the whole cave, and throwing out black and awful shadows of the two fighters. They were close to the hole in the inner wall now. Gresh's face in that unsteady glare was horrible to see. He loosed his hold a second, then lunged at Vic with the fury of a mad brute. And Vic, who had fought the devil in himself to a standstill three hours ago, now caught the fiend outside of him for a finishing blow, and the strength of that last struggle was terrific.

Up to this time Vic had not spoken.

"I killed the other snakes. I'll kill you now," he growled, as he held the outlaw at length in a conquering grip, his knees on

Gresh's breast, his right hand on Gresh's throat.

In that weird light the conqueror's face was only a degree less brutal than the outlaw's face. And Burleigh meant every word, for murder was in his heart and in his clutching fingers. Beneath the weight of his strength Gresh slowly relaxed, struggling fiercely at first and groping blindly to escape. Then he began to whine for mercy, but his whining maddened his conqueror more than his blows had done. For such strife is no mere wrestling match. Every blow struck against a fellowman is as the smell of blood to the tiger, feeding a fiendish eagerness to kill. Beside, Burleigh had ample cause for vengeance. The creature under his grip was not only a bootlegger through whose evil influence men took other lives or lost their own; he had slain one innocent man, Vic's own father, and in the room where his dead mother lay had robbed Vic's home of every valuable thing. He had sworn vengeance on all who bore the name of Burleigh. What fate might await Bug, Vic dared not picture. One strangling grip now could finish the business forever, and his clutch tightened, as

Gresh lay begging like a coward for his own worthless life.

"It's a good thing a fellow has a guardian angel once in a while. We get pretty close to the edge sometimes and never know how near we are to destruction," Vic had said to Elinor in here on the April day.

It was not Vic's guardian angel, but little Bug whose white face was thrust between him and his victim, and the touch of a soft little hand and the pleading child-voice that cried:

"Don't kill him, Vic. He's frough of fighting now. Don't hurt him no more."

Vic staid his hand at the words. The few minutes of this mad-beast duel had made him forget the sound of human voices. He half lifted himself from Gresh's body at Bug's cry. And Bug, wise beyond his years, quaint-minded little Bug, said, softly:

"Fordive us our debts as we fordive our debtors."

Strange, loving words of the Man of Galilee, spoken on the mountain-side long, long ago, and echoed now by childish lips in the dying light of the cavern to these two men, drunk with brute-lust for human blood! For Vic the words struck like

blows. All the years since his father's death he had waited for this hour. At last he had met and vanquished the man who had taken his father's life, and now, exultant in his victory, came this little child's voice.

The cave darkened. A mist, half blood, half blindness, came before his eyes, but clear to his ears there sounded the ringing words:

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay!"

It was the voice of Discipline calling to his better judgment, as Bug's innocent pleading spoke to the finer man within him.

Under his grip Gresh lay motionless, all power of resistance threshed out of him.

"Are you ready to quit?" Vic questioned, hoarsely, bending over the almost lifeless form.

The outlaw mumbled assent.

"Then I'll let you live, you miserable wretch, and the courts will take care of you."

Burleigh himself was faint from strife and loss of blood. As he relaxed his vigilance the last atom of strength, the last hope of escape returned to Gresh. He sprang to his feet, staggered blindly then, quick as a panther, he leaped through the hole in the

farther wall, wriggled swiftly into the blind crevices of the inner cave, and was gone.

It was Trench who dressed Vic's head that night and shielded him until his strength returned. But it was Bond Saxon who counseled patience.

"Don't squeal to the sheriff now," he urged. "The scoundrel is gone, and it would make a nine days' hooray, and nothing would come of it. He was darned slick to take the time when Funnybone was away."

"Why?" Vic asked.

But Bond would not tell why. And Vic never dreamed how much cause Bond Saxon had to dread the day when Tom Gresh should be brought into court, and his own great crime committed in his drunken hours would demand retribution. So Lagonda Ledge and Sunrise knew nothing of what had occurred. Burleigh had no recourse but to wait, while Bug buttoned up his lips, as he had done for Burgess out at Pigeon Place, and conveniently "fordot" what he chose not to tell. But he wandered no more alone about the pretty by-corners of Lagonda Ledge.

14. CHAPTER XIV
THE DERELICTS

IT was early spring before Dr. Fenneben returned to Lagonda Ledge. Everybody thought the new line on his face was put there by the death of his brother. To those who loved him most—that is, to all Lagonda Ledge—he was growing handsomer every year, and even with this new expression his countenance wore a more kindly grace than ever before.

"Norrie, your uncle was a strange man," Fenneben declared, as he and Elinor sat in the library on the evening of his return. "Naturally, I am unlike my stepbrothers,

but I have not even understood them. There were many things I learned at Joshua's bedside that I never knew of the family before. There were some things for you to know, but not now."

"I can trust you, Uncle Lloyd, to do just the right thing," Norrie declared.

The new line of sadness deepened in Lloyd Fenneben's face.

"That is a hard thing to do sometimes. Your trust will help me wonderfully, however," he replied. "My brother in his last hours made urgent requests of me and pled with me until I pledged my word to carry out his wishes. Here's where I need your trust most."

Elinor bent over her uncle and softly stroked the heavy black hair from his forehead.

"Here's where I help you most, then," she said, gently.

"I have some funds, Elinor, to be yours at your graduation—not before. Believe me, dear girl, I begged of Joshua to let me turn them over to you now, but he staid obstinate to the last."

"And I don't want a thing different till I get my diploma. Not even till I get my

Master's Degree for that matter," Elinor said, playfully.

"And meantime, Norrie, will you just be a college girl and drop all thought of this marrying business until you are through school?" Fenneben was hesitating a little now. "A year hence will be time enough for that."

"Most gladly," Elinor assured him.

"Then that's all for my brother's sake. Now for mine, Norrie, or for yours, rather, if my little girl has her mind all set about things after school days, I hope she will not be a flirt. Sometimes the words and acts cut deeper into other lives than we ever dream. Norrie, I know this out of the years of my own lonely life."

Elinor's eyes were dewy with tears and she bent her head until her hair touched his cheek.

"I'll try to be good `fornever,' as Bug Buler says," she murmured.

Over in the Saxon House on this same evening Vincent Burgess had come in to see Dennie about some books.

"I took your advice, Dennie," he said. "I have been a man to the extent of making

myself square with Victor Burleigh, and I've felt like a free man ever since."

The look of joy and pride in Dennie's eyes thrilled him with a keen pleasure. Her eyes were of such a soft gray and her pretty wavy hair was so lustrous tonight.

"Dennie, I am going to be even more of a man than you asked me to be."

Dennie did not look up. The pink of her cheek, her long lashes over her downcast eyes, the sunny curls above her forehead, all were fair to Vincent Burgess. As he looked at her he began to understand, blind bat that he had been all this time, he, Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B., Instructor in Greek from Harvard University.

"I must be going now. Good-night, Dennie."

He shook hands and hurried away, but to the girl who was earning her college education there was something in his handclasp, denied before.

The next day there was a settling of affairs at Sunrise, and the character-building put into Lloyd Fenneben's hand, as clay for the potter's wheel, seemed to him to be shaping somewhat to its destined uses.

Again, Vincent Burgess sat in the chair

by the west study window, acting-dean, now seeking neither types, nor geographical breadth, nor seclusion amid barren prairie lands for profound research in preparing for a Master's Degree.

With no effort to conceal matters, except the fact that the trust funds had first belonged to his own sister and brother-in-law, he explained to Fenneben the line of events connecting him with Victor Burleigh.

"And, Dr. Fenneben, I must speak of a matter I have never touched upon with you before. It was agreed between Dr. Wream and myself that I should become his nephew by marriage. I want to go to Miss Elinor and ask her to release me. You will pardon my frankness, for I cannot honorably continue in this relationship since I have restored the property to Victor Burleigh."

"He thinks she will not care for him now," Fenneben said to himself. Aloud he said:

"Have you ever spoken directly to Elinor on this matter?"

"N-no. It was an understanding between her and her uncle and between him and me," Burgess replied.

"Well, I don't pretend to know girls very

well, being a confirmed bachelor"—the Dean's eyes were smiling—"but my advice at this distance is not to ask Norrie to release you from what she herself has never yet bound you. I'll vouch for her peace of mind; and your sense of honor is fully vindicated now. To be equally frank with you, Burgess, now that Norrie is entirely in my charge, I have put this sort of thing for her absolutely into the after-commencement years. The best wife is not always the girl who wears a diamond ring through three or four years of her college life. I want my niece to be a girl now, not a bride-in-waiting."

As Burgess rose to go his eye caught sight of the pigeons above the bend in the river.

"By the way, Doctor, have you ever found out anything about the woman who used to live in that deserted place up north?"

"Nothing yet," Fenneben replied. "But, remember, I have not spent a week—that is, a sane week—in Lagonda Ledge since the night you, and she, and Saxon, and the dog saved my life. I shall take up her case soon."

"She is gone away and nobody knows

where, Saxon tells me," Burgess said. "For many reasons I wish we could find her, but she has dropped out of sight."

Lloyd Fenneben wondered at the sorrowful expression on the younger man's face when he said this.

As he left the study Victor Burleigh came in.

"Sit down, Burleigh. What can I do for you?" Fenneben asked.

Something like his own magnetism of presence was in the young man before him.

"I want to tell you something," Vic responded.

"Let me tell you something. I knew you had good blood in your veins even when I saw you kill that bull snake. Burgess has just been in. He has told me his side of your story. Noble fellow he is to free himself of a life-long slavery to somebody else's dollars. However much a man may try to hide the fetters of unlawful gains, they clank in his own ears till he hates himself. Now Burgess is a freeman."

"I am glad to hear you say so, Dr. Fenneben. It makes my own freedom sweeter," Vic declared.

"Yes," Fenneben replied. "Your added

means will bring you life's best gift—opportunity."

"I have no added means, Doctor. I have funds in trust for Bug Buler, and I come to ask you to take his legal guardianship for me." And then he told his own life story.

"So the heroism shifts to you as well. I can picture the cost to a man like yourself," the Dean said. "Have you no record of Bug's father and mother?"

"None but the record given by Dr. Wream. They are dead," Burleigh replied. "His father may have met the same fate that my father did."

"Why don't you take the guardianship yourself, Burleigh? The boy is yours in love and blood. He ought to be in law."

Victor Burleigh stood up to his full height, a magnificent product of Nature's handiwork. But the mind and soul "Dean Funnybone" had helped to shape.

"I will be honest with you, Dr. Fenneben," Burleigh said, and his voice was deep and sweetly resonant. "If I keep the money in charge I may not be proof against the temptation to use it for myself. As strong as my strong arms are my hates and loves, and for some reasons I would do almost

anything to gain riches. I might not resist the tempter."

Lloyd Fenneben's black eyes blazed at the words.

"I understand perfectly what you mean, but no woman who exacts this price is worth the cost." Then, in a gentler tone, he continued: "Burleigh, will you take my advice? I have always had your welfare on my heart. Finish your college work first. Get the best of the classroom, the library, the athletic field, and the `picnic spread.' Is that the right term? But fit yourself for manhood before you undertake a man's duties. Meantime, He who has given you the mastery in the years behind you is leading you toward the larger places before you, teaching you all the meanings of Strife, and Sacrifice, and Service symbolized above our doorway in our proud College initial letter. The Supremacy is yet to come. Will you follow my counsel? I'll take care of Bug, and we will keep Burgess out of this for a while."

Burleigh thought he understood, and the silent hand clasp pledged the faith of the country boy to the teacher's wishes.

It is only in story books that events leap

out as pages are turned, events that take days on days of real life to compass. In the swing of one brief year Lagonda Ledge knew little change. New cement walks were built south almost to the Kickapoo Corral. A new manufacturing concern had bonds voted for it at an exciting election, and a squabble for a suitable site was in process. Vincent Burgess and Victor Burleigh, two strong men, were growing actually chummy, and Trench declared he was glad they had decided to quit playing marbles for keeps and hiding each other's caps.

And now the springtime of the year was on the beautiful Walnut Valley. Elinor and Dennie, Trench, "Limpy," the crippled student, and Victor Burleigh were all on the home-stretch of their senior year. One more June Commencement day and Sunrise would know them no more. Beyond all this there was nothing new at Lagonda Ledge until suddenly the white-haired woman was up at Pigeon Place, again, a fact known only to old Bond Saxon and little Bug, who saw her leave the train. The little blue smoke-twist was again rising lazily in the warm May air, and somebody was systematically robbing houses in town, and Bond

Saxon was often drunk and hiding away from sight. A May storm sent the Walnut booming down the valley, bank full, cutting off traffic at the town bridge, but the days that followed were a joy. A tenderly green world it was now, all blossom-decked, and blown across by the gentle May zephyrs, with nothing harsh nor cruel in it, unless the rushing river down below the shallows might seem so. The Kickapoo Corral, luxuriant with flowers, and springing grass, and May green foliage, told nothing of the old-time siege and sorrow of Swift Elk and the Fawn of the Morning Light.

On the night after the storm Professor Burgess stopped at the Saxon House.

"Where is your father, Dennie?" he asked.

"He went up north to help somebody out of the mud and water, I suppose," Dennie replied. "He is the kindest neighbor, and he has been trying to—to keep straight. He told me when he left that this night's work was to be a work of redemption for him. He may get stronger some time."

In his heart Burgess knew better. He had no faith in the old man's will power, and the burden of a hidden crime he knew would

but increase its weight with time, and drag Bond down at last. But Dennie need not suffer now.

"Will you go with me down to the old Corral tomorrow afternoon, Dennie? I want some plants that grow there. I'm studying nature along with Greek," he said, smiling.

"Of course, if it is fair," Dennie replied, the pretty color blooming deeper in her cheeks.

"Oh, we go fair or foul. You remember we fought it out coming home from there once."

Meanwhile Bond Saxon was hurrying north on his work of redemption. At the bend in the river he found Tom Gresh sitting on the flat stone slab. The light was gleaming through the shrubbery of the little cottage, and the homey sounds of evening and the twitter of late-coming birds were in the air.

"What are you here for, Gresh?" Bond asked, hoarsely. "I thought you had left for good."

The villainous-looking outlaw drew a flask from his pocket.

"Have a drink, Saxon. Take the whole

bottle," and he thrust it into the old man's hands.

Bond wavered a moment, then flung it far into the foamy floods of the Walnut.

"Not any more. You shall not get me drunk again while you rob and kill."

"You did the killing for me once. Won't you do it again?" Gresh snarled.

Bond clinched his fists but did not strike.

"What are you after now?" he asked. "You are through with the Burleighs; Vic settled you and you know it."

Even with the words the clutch of Vic's fingers on the outlaw's throat seemed to choke him now.

"If my last Burleigh is gone," he growled with an oath, "I'm not done yet. There's Elinor Wream. Don't forget that her mother was my adopted sister. Don't forget that my old foster father cut me off without a cent and gave her all his money. That's why Nathan Wream married her. He wanted her money for colleges." The sneer on the man's face was diabolical. "I can hit the old man through Elinor, and I'll do it some time, and that's not the only blow that I can strike here, and I am going to finish this thing now." He pointed toward

the cottage where the unprotected woman sat alone. "Twice I've nerved myself to do it and been fooled each time. One October day you were here drunk. I could have laid it on you easy, and maybe fixed Fenneben too, if a little child's voice hadn't scared me stiff. And the day of the big football game you wouldn't get drunk and she must go down to that game just to look once at Lloyd Fenneben. I meant to finish her that day. This is the third and last time now. There is not even a dog to protect her."

Bond Saxon had been a huge fellow in his best days, and now he summoned all the powers nature had left to him.

"Tom Gresh," he cried, "in my infernal weakness you made me a drunken beast, who took the life of an innocent man you wanted out of your way. You thought, you fool, that she might care for you then. I've carried the curse of that deed on my soul night and day. I'll wipe it partly away now by saving her life from you. So surely as tonight, tomorrow, or ever you try to harm her, I'll not show you the mercy Vic Burleigh showed you once."

Strange forms the guardian angel takes!

Hence we entertain it unawares.

Of all Lagonda Ledge, old Bond Saxon, standing between a woman and the peril of her life, looked least angelic. Gresh understood him and turned first in fawning and tempting trickery to his adversary. But Saxon stood his ground. Then the outlaw raged in fury, not daring to strike now, because he knew Bond's strength. And still the old man was unmoved. A life saved for the life he had taken was steeling his soul to courage.

At last in the dim light, Gresh stood motionless a minute, then he struck his parting blow.

"All right, Bond Saxon, play protector all you want to, but it's a short game for you. The sheriff is out of town tonight, but tomorrow afternoon he will get back to Lagonda Ledge. Tomorrow afternoon I go with all my proofs—Oh, I've got 'em. And you, Bond Saxon, will be behind the bars for your crime, done not so many years ago, and your honorable daughter, disgraced forever by you, can shift for herself. I've nothing to lose; why should I protect you?"

He leaped down the bank into the swiftly flowing river, and, swimming easily to the

farther side, he disappeared in the underbrush.

The next afternoon, somebody remembered that Bond Saxon had crossed the bridge and plunged into the overflow of the river around the west end. But Bond had been drunk much of late and nobody approached him when he was drunk. How could Lagonda Ledge know the agony of the old man's soul as he splashed across the Walnut waters and floundered up the narrow glen to the cave? Or how, for Dennie's sake, he had begged on his knees for mercy that should save his daughter's name? Or how harder than the stone of the ledges, that the trickling water through slow-dragging centuries has worn away, was the stony heart of the creature who denied him? And only Victor Burleigh had power to picture the struggle that must have followed in that cavern, and beyond the wall into the blind black passages leading at last to the bluff above the river, where, clinched in deadly combat, the two men, fighting still, fell headlong into the Walnut floods.

Down at the shallows Professor Burgess and Dennie had found the waters too deep

to reach the Kickapoo Corral, so they strolled along the bluff watching the river rippling merrily in the fall of the afternoon sunshine. And brightly, too, the sunshine fell on Dennie Saxon's rippling hair, recalling to Vincent Burgess' memory the woodland camp fire and the old legend told in the October twilight and the flickering flames lighting Dennie's face and the wavy folds of her sunny hair.

But even as he remembered, a cry up stream came faintly, once and no more, while, grappling still, two forms were borne down by the swift current to the bend above the whirlpool. Dennie and Vincent sprang to the very edge of the bluff, powerless to save, as Tom Gresh and Bond Saxon were swept around the curve below the Corral. Across the shallows they struggled for a footing, but the undertow carried them on toward the fatal pool.

A shriek from the bank came to Bond Saxon's ears, and he looked up and saw the two reaching out vain hands to him.

"Your oath, Vincent; your oath!" he cried in agonizing tones.

Then Vincent Burgess put one arm about Dennie Saxon and drew her close to him

and lifted up his right hand high above him in token to the drowning man of his promise, under heaven, to keep that oath forever.

A look of joy swept over the old face in the water, his struggling ceased, and once more tribute was paid to the grim Chieftain of Lagonda's Pool.

—

They said about town the next day that it was the peacefulest face ever seen below a coffin lid. And, remembering only his many acts of neighborly kindness, they forgave and forgot his weaknesses, while to the few who knew his life-tragedy came the assuring hope that the forgiving mercy of man is but a type of the boundless mercy of a forgiving God.

15. CHAPTER XV
THE MASTERY

JUNE time in the Walnut Valley, and commencement time at Sunrise on the limestone ridge! Nor pen nor brush can show the glory of the radiant prairies, and the deep blue of the "unscarred heavens," and the bright gleams from rippling waters. And at the end of a perfect day comes the silvery grandeur of a moonlit June night.

It was late afternoon of the day before commencement. Victor Burleigh stood on the stone where four years ago the bull snake had stretched itself in the lazy sunshine. Only one more day at Sunrise for him, and the little heartache, unlike any

other sorrow a life can ever know, was his, as he stood there. In the four years' battle he had come off conqueror until the symbol above the doorway no longer held any mystery for him. His character and culture now matched his voice. Before him was higher learning, an under-professorship at Harvard, and later on the pulpit for his life work. But now the heartache of parting was his, and a deeper pain than breaking school ties was his also. A year of jolly goodfellowship was ending, a happy year, with Elinor his most frequent companion. And often in this year he had wondered at Lloyd Fenneben's harsh judgment of her. Fondness of luxury seemed foreign to her, and womanly beauty of character made her always "Norrie the beloved." But Victor was true to Fenneben's demands and willing to try to live through the years after, if one year of happy association could be his now. Whatever claims Burgess might assert later, he could not take from another the claim to happy memories. But, today, there was the dull steady heartache that he knew had come to stay.

Presently Elinor joined him.

"May I come down tonight for a good-by

stroll, Elinor? There's a full moon and after tomorrow there are to be no more moons, nor stars, nor suns, nor lands, nor seas, nor principalities, nor powers for us at Sunrise."

"I wish you would come, Victor," Elinor said. "Come early. There's a crowd going out somewhere, and we can join the ranks of the great ungraduated for the last time."

"Elinor, I'm not hunting a crowd tonight," Vic said in a low voice.

"Well, come, anyway, and we'll hunt the solitude, if we can't hunt any other game." And they strolled homeward together.

In the early evening Lloyd Fenneben and Elinor sat on the veranda watching the sunset through the trees beyond the river.

"You are to graduate from Sunrise tomorrow," Dr. Fenneben was saying. "For a Wream that is the real beginning of life. I have your business matters entrusted to me, ready to close up as soon as you are `legally graduated' according to my brother's wishes, but you may as well know them now."

He paused, and Elinor, thinking of the

moonlight, maybe, waited in peaceful silence.

"Norrie, when I finished at the university my brother put a small fortune into my hands and bade me go West and build a new Harvard. You know our family hold that that is the only legitimate use for money."

Norrie smiled assent.

"I did not ask whose money it was, for my brother handled many bequests, and I was a poor business man then. I came and invested it at last in Sunrise-by-the-Walnut. That was your mother's money, given by your father to Joshua, who gave it to me. Joshua did not tell me, and I supposed some good, old Boston philanthropist had bought an indulgence for his ignorant soul by endowing this thing so freely. I found it out on Joshua's deathbed, and only to pacify him would I consent to keep it until now. Henceforth, it must be yours. That is why I asked you a year ago to just be a college girl and drop all thought about marrying. I wanted you to come into possession of your own property before you bound yourself by any bonds you could not break."

Elinor sat silent for a while, her dark eyes seeing only the low golden sunset. She understood

now what had grooved that line of care in Lloyd Fenneben's face when he came home from the East. But he had conquered, aye, he had won the mastery.

"And you and Sunrise?" she asked at length.

"I can sell the college site and buildings to this new manufactory coming here in August. Added to this, I have acquired sufficient funds of my own to pay you the entire amount and a good rate of interest with it. My grief is that for all these years, I have kept you out of your own."

Elinor rose up, white and cold, and put her hand on her uncle's hand.

"Let me think a little, Uncle Lloyd. It is not easy to realize one's fortune in a minute." Then she left him.

"It makes little difference what passion possesses a man's soul, if it possesses him he will wrong his fellowmen," Fenneben said to himself. "In Joshua Wream's craving to endow college claims he robbed this girl of her inheritance and sent her to me, telling me she was shallow-minded and wholly given to a love of luxuries, that I might not see his plans; while Norrie, never knowing, has proved over and over how false these

charges were. And at last, to still his noisy conscience, he would marry her, willing or unwilling, to Vincent Burgess. But with all this, his last hours were full of sorrowful confession. What do these Masters' Degrees my brother bore avail a man if he have not the mastery within? Meanwhile, my labors here must end."

Lonely and crushed, with his life work taken from him, he sat and faced the sunset. Presently, he saw Elinor and Victor Burleigh strolling away in the soft evening light. At the corner, Elinor turned and waved a good-by to him. Then the memory of his own commencement day came back to him, and of the happy night before. Oh, that night before! Can a man ever forget! And now, tonight!

"Don Fonnybone," Bug Buler piped, as he came trudging around the corner. "I want to confessing."

He came to Fenneben's side and looked up confidently in his face.

"Well, confessing. I've just finished doing that myself," Fenneben said.

"I did a bad, long ago. I want to go and confessing. Will you go with me?"

"Where shall we go to be shriven, Bug?

"To Pigeon Place," Bug responded. "The Pigeon woman is there now. I saw her coming, and I must go right away and confessing."

"I'll go with you, Bug. I want to see that woman, anyhow," Fenneben said.

And the two went away in the early twilight of this rare June evening.

Out at Pigeon Place, when Dr. Fenneben and little Bug walked up the grassy way to the vine-covered porch in the misty twilight, Mrs. Marian sat in the shadow, unaware of their coming until they stood before her.

Lloyd Fenneben lifted his hat, and little Bug imitated him.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Marian. This little boy wanted to tell you of something that was troubling him. I think he trespassed on your property unknowingly."

The gray-haired woman stood motionless in the shadow still. Her fair face less haggard than of yore, as if some dread had left it, and only loneliness remained.

"I was here, and you was away, and I peeked in the window. It was rude and I never did see you to tell you, and I'm sorry and I won't for—never do it again. Dennie

told me to come tonight, and bring Don Fonnybone." Bug had his part well in hand.

Even as she smiled at him, Dr. Fenneben noticed how her hand on the lattice shook.

"And I want to thank you, Mrs. Marian, for your bravery and goodness on the night I was assaulted here." Fenneben was a gentleman to the core and his courtesy was charming. "I meant to find you long ago, but my brother's death, with my own long illness, and your absence, and my many duties—" He paused with a smile.

"Oh, Lloyd, Lloyd, on an evening like this, why do you come here?"

The woman stood in the light now, a tragic figure of sorrow. And she was not yet forty.

Dr. Fenneben caught his breath and the light seemed to go out before him.

"Marian, oh, Marian! After all these years, do I find you here? They said you were dead." He caught her in his arms and held her close to his breast.

"Lots of folks spoons round the Saxon House, so I went away and lef 'em," Bug explained to Vic once afterward.

And that accounted for little Bug sitting lonely on the flat stone by the bend in the river where Dennie and Burgess found him later.

"So you have stood between me and that assassin all these years, even when the lies against me made you doubt my love. Oh, Marian, the strength of a woman's heart!" Fenneben declared, as, side by side, black hair and the gray near together, these long-separated lovers rebuilt their world.

"And this little child brought you here at last. `A little child shall lead them,' " the woman murmured.

"Yes, Bug is a gift of God." Lloyd Fenneben was bending over her. "He is Victor Burleigh's nephew, who found him in a deserted place—"

A shriek cut the evening air and she who had been known as Mrs. Marian lay in a faint at Fenneben's feet.

"Tell me, Marian, what this means."

Lloyd Fenneben had restored her to consciousness and she was resting, white and trembling, in his arms.

"My little Bug, my baby, Burgess!" she sobbed. "Bond Saxon, in a drunken fit, killed his father. Then Tom Gresh carried

him away to save him from Bond, too, so Tom declared, but I did not believe him. Bond never harmed a little child. Tom said he meant no harm and that Bug was stolen from where he had left him. It was then that my hair turned white. Tom tried once, a year ago in December, to make me believe he could bring Bug back to me if I would care for him—for that wicked murderer! Oh, Lloyd!"

She nestled close in Dr. Fenneben's protecting arms, and shivered at the thought.

"And you named him Burgess for your own name. Does Vincent know?" Fenneben questioned, tenderly smoothing the white hair as Norrie had so often smoothed his own.

"Is this Vincent my own brother? Will he really own me as his sister? I've tried to meet him many times. I left his picture on my table that he might see it if he should ever come. My father separated us years ago. After we came West he sent me just one letter in which he said Vincent would never speak to me nor claim me as his sister again. A brother—a lover— and my baby boy!"

And the lonely woman, overcome with

joy, sat white and still beneath the white moonbeams.

Joy does not kill any more than sorrow. Vincent Burgess and Dennie Saxon, who came just at the right time, told how they had waited with Bug at the slab of stone by the bend in the river until they should be needed.

"It was Dennie who planned it all," Vincent said, "and did not even let me know. Bug told her my picture was on the table in there. But so long as her father lived, she kept her counsel."

"I tried four years ago to get Dr. Fenneben to come out here," Dennie said. And the Dean remembered the autumn holiday and Dennie's solicitude for an unknown woman.

But the joy of this night, crowning all other joys in the Walnut Valley, was in that sacred moment when Bug Buler walked slowly up to Marian Burleigh, sister to Vincent Burgess, lost love of Lloyd Fenneben's youth—slowly, and with big brown eyes glowing with a strange new love light, and, putting up both his chubby hands to her cheeks, he murmured softly:

"Is you my own mother? Then, I'll love you fornever."

Meantime, on this last moonlit June night, Elinor and Vic were strolling down the new south cement walk, a favorite place for the young people now.

At the farther end, Vic said:

"Norrie, let's go down across the shallows to the west bluff again. Can you climb it, or shall we join the crowd down in the Kickapoo Corral?"

"I can climb where you can, Victor," Elinor declared.

"Dennie will never want to come here again. Poor Dennie!"

Vic was helping Elinor across the shallows as he spoke. Up in the Corral a happy crowd of young people were finishing their last "picnic spread" for the year. Below the shallows the whirlpool was glistening all treacherously smooth and level under the moonbeams.

"Why `poor Dennie,' Victor? Her father had nothing more for him, here, except disgrace. The tribute paid him at his funeral would have been forever withheld, if he had lived a day longer, and he died

sure of Dennie's future." Elinor spoke gently.

"Who told you all this, Elinor?" Victor asked.

"Professor Burgess, when he showed me the diamond ring Dennie is to wear tomorrow."

"Dennie, a diamond! I'm glad for Dennie. Diamonds are fine to have," Vic declared.

They had climbed to the top of the west bluff. The silvery prairie and silver river and mist-wreathed valley, and overhead, the clear, calm sky, where the moon sailed in magnificent grandeur, were a setting to make the evening a perfect one. And in this setting was Elinor, herself the jewel, beautiful, winsome, womanly.

"I have some good news." She turned to the young man beside her. "You know the Wreams have made a life business of endowing colleges. Well, I am a Wream by blood, and tomorrow, oh, Victor, tomorrow, I, too, have the opportunity of a lifetime. I'm going to endow Sunrise."

He looked at her in amazement.

"Oh, it's clear enough," she exclaimed. "It was my money that built Sunrise. It

shall stay here, and Dr. Lloyd Fenneben, Dean of Sunrise, and acting-Dean Vincent Burgess, A.B., Professor of Greek, and Victor Burleigh, Valedictorian, who goes East to a professorship in Harvard, and to the ministry of the gospel later on—all you mighty men of valor will know how little Norrie Wream cares for money, except as it can make the world better and happier. I haven't lived in Lloyd Fenneben's home these four years without learning something of what is required for a Master's Degree."

"Norrie!" All the music of a soul poured into the music of the deep voice.

"Victor! There is no sacrifice in it. I wish there were, that I might wear the honors you wear so modestly."

"I, Elinor?"

"I know the whole story. Dennie told me when you had that awful fight, and Trenchie told me long ago, that you thought I must have money to make me happy. Why I, more than Dennie, or you, who gave Bug his claim?"

Elinor put up her hands to Victor, who took them both in his, as he drew her to him and kissed her sweet red lips. And there was a new heaven and a new earth created that

night in the soft silvery moonlight of the Walnut Valley.

"I'd rather be here with you than over the river with anybody else. I feel safer here," she murmured, remembering when they had striven in the darkness and the storm to reach this very height.

But Victor Burleigh could not speak. The mastery for which he had striven seemed to bring meed of reward too great for him to grasp with words.