The Price

of the interval found him still undecided as to the manner and direction of his flight-to say nothing of th

one must first embrace the loathsome thing itself. Griswold remembered the glimpse he had had of himself in the bar mirror of the pot-house, and the chains of his transformed identity began to gall him. It was to little purpose that he girded at his compunctions, telling himself that he was only playing a necessary part; that one needs must when

ust continue to be in utter sincerity Griswold the brother-loving. That said itself. But on the other hand, to escape the consequences of his act, he must hold himself in instant readiness to be

olver. But he had yet to learn that there is no supreme crisis in the human span, save that which ends it; that all the wayfaring duels with fat

sness of innocency; weighed against it, the thick packet of bank-notes in the tramp's bundle, and all that it might stand for, were as air-blown bubbles to refined gold. Yet he would not go back; he could not go back. To restore the money would be

the loosely twisted warp of his character and forced himself to think concretely toward a solution of the problem of flight. The posses

a great city. In his mind's eye he saw himself domiciled in some thriving interior town, working and studying among people who were not unindividualized by an artificial environment. In such a community theory and practice might go hand in hand; he could know and be known; and the money at his command would be vastly more of a moulding

of the approaching moment of departure. Toiling roustabouts, trailing in and out like an endless procession of human ants, were hurrying the last of the cargo aboard. Griswold stood to look on. The toilers were negroes, most of them, but with here and there among the blacks and yellows a paler face so begrimed with sweat and dust

no slave of the Toulon galleys was ever in bitterer bondage.... Free?-yes, free to toil and s

man, had stumbled and fallen like a crushed pack-animal under a load too heavy for him. Griswold was beside

ly, as an offset to the womanish tenderness; but when the man gasped

one sat up a

res. I been dyin' on my feet a

" queried Gri

ecko

y business in a deck cre

was a ghastly

e in the ground. But I kind o' thought I'd like to be planted 'longsid

he

named a small ri

g to work your pas

ry for it. But I rec

n appeal to his sympathies. His compassion went straight to t

by rail to your

twenty and thirty dollars, I reckon; and that's

ed dollars from his pocket fund and

I'll take your job on the boat. Don't be a fool!" he added, when the man put his face in his hands and began to choke. "It's a

ohn Wesle

urtly; and with that he shouldered the sick man'

e to find a safe hiding-place for the tramp's bundle in the knotted handkerchief. Th

he drew breath of blessed relief when the last man staggered up the plank with his burden. The bell was clanging its final summons, and the slowly revolving paddle-wheels were taking the strain from the mooring lines. Being near the bow line Griswold was one of the t

t spring line out there and ge

ed state-room, he did half-absently what John Gavitt might have done without blame: read the tacked-on card, w

voice at his elbow. "May I t

eaker, consternation promptly slew all the other emotions. For the owner of the tagged trunk was the young woma

ain when he was assured that she did not recognize him: became sane, and whipped off his cap, and dragged the trunk into the state-room. After w

himself down upon the sacked coffee on the engine-room guard to snatch a little rest be

as good as another, just so it is inconsequent e

rbitrarily than he began to prefigure the place and its probable lacks and havings. This process brought him by easy stages to pleasant idealizings of Miss Charlotte Farnham, wh

. "Her face is as readable as only the face of a woman instinctively good and pure in heart can be. Any man who can put her between the covers of a book may put anything else he pl

aper. The dozing night clerk gave him both, with a sleepy malediction thrown in; and he went b

aughter of aliens, but born in the West, of parents who have migrat

re not altogether human and womanly; features cast in the Puritan mould, with the lines of character well emphasized; lips that would be passionate but for-no, lips that will be passionate when the hour and the man arrive. A soul st

craftsman's fidelity to the exactnesses. Then he shook his head regretfully and tore the scrap of

ial to a stern sense of the fitness of things. "It is nothing less than a cold-blo