This site is full of FREE ebooks - Project Gutenberg Australia

Title: Queer Judson
Author: Joseph C. Lincoln
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0200511.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted: August 2002
Date most recently updated: August 2002

This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.ca

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title:      Queer Judson
Author:     Joseph C. Lincoln





CHAPTER I


Carey Judson swung about on the high stool behind the tall,
ink-spattered cherry desk and hitched up one long leg until the heel
of the shoe upon the foot attached to the leg was hooked over the
upper round of the stool.  Then, resting the elbow of a long right
arm upon the upraised knee, he lifted a hand--long and thin like
the rest of him--drew down a lock of hair until it reached the
bridge of his nose, twisted the end of the lock between his thumb
and finger, and gazed drearily out of the office window.

A snapshot of him taken in that attitude would have been a far more
characteristic likeness than any posed photograph could possibly
have been.  It would have emphasized the angularity of his figure,
the every-which-wayness of his thick light brown hair, the odd
manner in which his clothes managed not to fit him, although they
had been made by a fashionable city tailor.  It might have caught
the lines between his brows and at the corners of his wide,
pleasantly attractive mouth, perhaps a ghost of the expression in
his eyes, eyes which, in their dreamy wistfulness, were curiously
reminiscent of those of Abraham Lincoln.  In fact, such a snapshot,
taken at this time, would, omitting such details as beard and
coloring, have been rather like a picture of the great President.
Not, however, as to age, for Carey Judson was only thirty-four.

His full name was James Carey Judson, as had been his father's
before him, which was, of course, the reason why he, the son, had
always been called Carey.  Captain James Carey Judson--HE had
always been called, locally, "Cap'n Jim-Carey"--was dead, had been
dead seven years.  Carey had been very fond of his father, but now
he was thankful that the old gentleman was no longer living.  And,
on the whole, he envied him.  To be comfortably dead must be
infinitely preferable to being uncomfortably alive.  Captain Jim-
Carey had not wanted to die.  He enjoyed every minute of the life
allowed him, and was accustomed to speak enviously of another
mariner, Noah, who, he said, "was spry enough to put to sea in
command of the Ark when he was six hundred and odd.  A man,"
affirmed the captain, "was given time enough to learn how to
navigate in those days.  Now, just as a fellow is beginning to
catch on to the ropes, he is called aloft."  Captain Jim-Carey had
no wish to be called aloft; he would have much preferred staying
aboard this world.  His oldest son, on the contrary, would not have
minded dying, but considered himself obliged to live.  An odd fact,
as the son thought of it, but very typical of the kind of world it
was.

The room in which he sat, sprawled upon the high stool behind the
tall desk, was the office of J. C. Judson & Co.  The desk and the
stool and the old eight-sided clock on the wall were part of the
office equipment purchased by Captain Jim-Carey when he gave up
going to the Banks, in 1851, and set up business there in
Wellmouth, his native town.  J. C. Judson & Co. was the name on the
weather-beaten sign over the door of the good-sized building at the
foot of Wharf Lane.  The printed letter and bill heads in the desk
drawer announced that J. C. Judson & Co. were "Wholesale Dealers in
Fresh and Salt Fish.  Terms Thirty Days Net."  When Carey was a
little boy he used vaguely to suppose that the "Net" referred to
the method by which the fish were caught.  The "Co." upon the
letterhead and upon the sign had puzzled him then.  He used to
wonder if Mr. Ben Early, the manager, was the "Co." or was it Jabez
Drew, the wharf boss?  When he asked his father, the latter only
laughed.  When he asked Jabez, Jabez solemnly admitted that he was
not only the "Co.," but the entire establishment.  "I'm the Company
and the fish, too," vowed Mr. Drew.  "Don't you believe it?  Why--
why!  I'm surprised!  Don't I smell as if I was wholesale fish?"

He certainly did.  For the matter of that, the whole building, and
the wharf, and the neighborhood in which it stood reeked of fish.
And at the end of the wharf lay always one, and sometimes two or
three, schooners from which fish were being unloaded, or which were
just starting after more fish.  The skippers and crews of those
schooners smelled fishy, so did Mr. Early's office coat; even Cap'n
Jim-Carey, when he came home to eat supper with his two sons and
Mrs. Hepsibah Ellis, the housekeeper, brought the odor with him.
Carey had smelled fish ever since he could remember smelling
anything.  And he loathed the smell.  He was loathing it now, as he
sat upon the stool, looking out of the window.

The outlook had changed little.  It was very like what he
remembered seeing through that window twenty-five years earlier.
The wharf, the piles of barrels, the inevitable schooner at the end
of the wharf, the coating of fish scales over everything--they
looked about the same.  Jabez Drew was out there, chatting with the
mate of the schooner.  Jabez had changed, of course, since the days
when his employer's little son suspected him of being the "Co." on
the sign.  As a matter of fact, the "Co." was, and always had been,
a fiction.  Cap'n Jim-Carey, sole owner of the buildings and the
wharf and fleet, had added the "& Co." to his name merely because
he liked the looks of it.  Since his death, George Judson--Carey's
brother, two years younger than he--who fell heir to the business,
had left the lettering of the sign and the firm's stationery as it
was.  "Father liked it that way," he said, "and it is a name that
stands for something, so why change it?"  Even his wife's repeated
declarations that it was ridiculous not to put his own name there
where it belonged had, so far, been without effect.  Which was
unusual, for, as all Wellmouth knew and repeatedly said, Mrs.
George Judson was "boss" in that family, even though her husband
was boss of so many things outside it.

The ancient, but reliable, eight-sided clock marked the time as
half-past five.  The calendar hanging beside the clock was torn off
to a Saturday in July of a year early in the eighteen eighties.
And Carey Judson, bachelor, thirty-four years old, college
graduate--a far greater distinction in those days than now--so
recently junior partner of Osborne and Judson, bankers and brokers,
with offices in State Street in Boston--Carey Judson, now a
bookkeeper in the employ of his younger brother, and occupying that
by no means exalted position merely because of the relationship,
twisted the lock of hair between his finger and thumb, and, as he
gazed pessimistically out of the window, reflected that his first
week's labors in that employ were at an end.

Benjamin Early, store manager, and George Judson's trusted right-
hand man, came briskly through the rear door leading from the
warehouse and shipping rooms into the outer office.  Carey
remembered him as, in the old days, a little, straight up and down,
precise young man, able, efficient, and recognizing a joke only
when he saw it labeled as such.  In those days his dearest
dissipation was the annual picnic of the Methodist Sunday School,
in which school he taught a class.  He was no longer young, of
course, and his once shiny black hair, the little left of it, was
iron gray.  He was just as careful of it as ever, and the few
remaining locks sprouting at the sides of his narrow head were
encouraged to grow long and were plastered across the shiny desert
between.  He had been superintendent of his loved Sunday School for
eight years, was a director in the Wellmouth National Bank, and his
character, both as a Christian brother and a business man, was
above reproach.  He was careful of his conduct, careful of his
dress, and very careful of the stray pennies.  In every respect a
sharp contrast to the new bookkeeper.

He walked smartly and precisely over to the closet in which the
office employees of J. C. Judson & Co. were, under orders,
accustomed to hang their street apparel.  He removed his seersucker
shop jacket, washed his hands at the sink beside the closet, and
tenderly relaid and replastered, with the brush suspended by a
chain from the hook by the mirror, the strands of hair bridging the
waste places above his forehead.  A careful inspection of the
reflection in that mirror seemed to convince him that the
engineering feat was a success, for he turned again to the closet,
took from the shelf a pair of celluloid cuffs, secured these to his
wristbands with nickel "cuff holders," donned a respectable--almost
pious--black coat and lifted from the same shelf an equally
impeccable straw hat.

Then, turning toward the occupant of the desk stool, he smiled
between two sets of absolutely regular and orthodox false teeth,
and observed:

"Well, Carey, I think we can go home now."

Only two years before, when the junior partner of Osborne and
Judson last visited, in that capacity, his native town, Early
invariably addressed him as "Mr. Judson."  And there was no
condescension in the tone of the address then, quite the contrary.
Carey, of course, had noticed the change, but he did not resent it.
It was a part, a to-be-expected part, of the general change in the
world's attitude toward him, and the very least of his troubles.
He paused in the twisting of his forelock, tossed the latter away
from his eyes with a jerk of the head, and replied to Mr. Early's
observations with philosophic calm.

"Yes, so it is," he agreed.  "Good night, Ben."

Early took a step toward the outer door.  Then he hesitated and
turned back.

"Got along all right to-day, have you, Carey?" he inquired.

"What?  Oh, yes!  Yes.  I have got along."

"No trouble with the books?  Nothing has come up to--er--fuss you?
Nothing you didn't understand?"

Judson shook his head.  "Well, Ben," he said, "I wouldn't want to
say that, quite.  There has been nothing that I haven't THOUGHT I
understood.  That is the most I can swear to to-night."

The manager did not understand exactly, but he never admitted non-
understanding of anything.

"That's good--that's very good," he declared.

"I don't know whether it is or not.  Wait till next week.  My
thoughts haven't had time to get to the bank.  They haven't been
certified yet."

More non-comprehension on Early's part.  He coughed and tried
again.

"Don't forget what I've told you before, Carey," he said,
graciously.  "At any time when anything happens--any little matter
comes up that you ain't--aren't sure of, just come to me about it.
Never mind whether I'm busy or not.  Don't let that keep you from
speaking to me.  I'll be glad to help you at any time."

"Much obliged, Ben.  I'll try not to come too often."

"Any time, any time.  No trouble at all.  How did you get along
with the pay roll?"

"Well, I paid everybody that asked for their wages.  And I don't
remember any one who was too shy to ask."

"Eh? . . .  Oh!  Oh, yes, I see!  Ha, ha!  No, I don't imagine they
would be.  Well--er--how do you like the work here, so far as
you've gone?"

For the first time Carey Judson smiled, and the smile lighted up
his thin face in a surprisingly agreeable way.  Members of the
opposite sex had, in the old days, been known to observe that when
he smiled he was really quite good looking.

"Ben," he observed, "that isn't exactly the question.  It doesn't
make much difference how I like it.  The real conundrum is 'Can I
do it?'  I guess that is the question in your mind, isn't it?"

Early, in spite of his self-importance, was a little taken aback
and showed that he was.

"Why--no, no!" he protested; "there isn't any doubt you can do it.
No, no!  I--we haven't any doubt of that at all."

"Haven't you?  I shall be glad to lend you a little.  _I_ have a
surplus of doubts."

"Oh, no, no!  You mustn't talk that way.  Of course, it's natural
that you find it hard--a little mite hard at first.  The wholesale
fish business is different from the stockbroking business.  Yes, it
is different."

He delivered this nugget of wisdom with intense solemnity.  For an
instant the bookkeeper regarded him with a look of suspicion, as
if, in spite of long acquaintance, he was uncertain whether or not
a sarcasm was intended.  The unworthy suspicion must have been
dismissed, however, for his reply was given with a gravity
approaching reverence.

"You're right, Ben," he vowed.  "Yes, you're right.  I have noticed
the difference myself."

Mr. Early coughed again.  He was about to make a little speech and
when he made little speeches to his Sunday School he always
prefaced them with coughs.

"Yes," he went on, "it's different.  And the bookkeeping in a
wholesale fish business like ours is what you might call
considerable--er--complicated.  What makes it more mixed up and
troublesome is the retailing we have to do.  If it was left to me
altogether--" he spoke as if at least seven-eighths of it WAS left
to him--"I think I should do away with retailing.  Yes, I think I
should.  But Mr. Judson--George, I mean--doesn't hardly like to
give it up on account of the cap'n--your father--being so set on
it, as you might say.  Cap'n Jim-Carey always said that so long as
his neighbors in Wellmouth wanted to buy fish for them and their
families to eat, they should have the privilege of buying it here.
George and I have talked matters over a good many times since the
old man--since the cap'n passed on, and, although we realize the
bother of keeping two sets of accounts, George feels--we feel that
we ought to go on doing it because it would please him.  Now there
ain't a mite of use," he added, growing a little more heated and
consequently losing a trifle of his platform manner and language,
"in a firm like ours here peddling out codfish to every Tom, Dick
and Harry that wants to lug one home for dinner.  And no profit
that amounts to anything, either.  It's a pesky nuisance, and--"

His feelings were running away with him and he pulled them up with
a jerk, settling back upon the platform again with another little
cough and a smile of resignation.

"But there, there!" he said.  "We hadn't ought to complain, I
suppose.  And we don't.  Your brother George says oblige the
neighbors for the cap'n's sake, so we keep on obliging 'em.  He's a
very fine man, Mr. George Judson is.  Wellmouth is proud of him."

It may have been an over-tender conscience working upon a sensitive
imagination, but to Carey Judson it seemed as if the emphasis in
Ben Early's concluding sentence was upon the last word in that
sentence.  He suspected that it might be intended as a dig in the
ribs of a member of the Judson family of whom Wellmouth was
anything but proud.  He winced a little inwardly, but he showed no
outward sign of the hurt.

"George is the best there is," he declared.  "You ought to be proud
of him."

"Yes--yes, indeed, we are.  Oh, by the way, where is he?  Has he
gone home?"

"George?  No, he is in there--in the private office.  Cap'n Higgins
is with him."

"Which Higgins?"

"Tobias."

"Cap'n Tobe?  Sho!  What does he want, I wonder? . . .  Oh!  I see.
Probably come to talk a little more about that seven hundred
dollars of his.  Humph!  I wonder that George bothers with him.  It
isn't any worse for him than it is for the rest. . . .  Oh, by the
way, things are pretty well settled up for you by now, Carey, I
presume likely.  Eh?"

Carey did not answer.  He was looking out of the window once more.
Mr. Early tried again.

"I say, George has got your affairs pretty well fixed up by this
time, hasn't he?" he repeated.

Judson's long body shifted uneasily on the stool.

"I guess so," he answered, curtly.  "Good night, Ben."

The manager did not take the hint.  He looked as if he were about
to make another little speech.  Just then, however, the knob of the
outer door was jerked from his fingers and the door pushed
violently open.  A plump, red-faced little woman, her outward
apparel seemingly all at loose ends and fluttering, bounced into
the office, panting in her haste.

"There!" she exclaimed, triumphantly, "you AIN'T all gone home, be
you?  I was afraid you would be.  I was up to Sophy Cahoon's and we
got to talkin' about this, that and t'other thing until I declare
if I didn't forget all about the time!  And I don't know's I'd
wouldn't be forgettin' it yet if her settin'-room clock hadn't
banged out six right 'longside of my head.  I jumped much as a foot
right clear out of the chair I was settin' in.  'My soul and body!'
says I.  'Don't tell me that's six o'clock already!  I was on my
way down to George Judson's store to pay my fish bill, got the
money right in my hand to pay it with,' I says, 'and here I've set
and set and now 'twill be too late to catch 'em 'fore they close
up.  And I don't know WHEN I'll get down to the village again.
It's too bad!'  'No, 'tain't too bad, neither,' Sophy says; 'it's
all right.  That clock's all of fifteen minutes fast and you can
fetch there yet, if you hurry.'  And if I AIN'T hurried!  Don't say
a word!  Whew!"

She paused to dab at her forehead with a crumpled handkerchief.
Her hat was askew already and the dabs pushed it still farther
toward her left ear.  Carey remembered and recognized her now.  She
was "one of those Blounts," from the settlement in the woods beyond
Wellmouth Neck and was married to Uriel Hope, a member of "that
Hope tribe," long resident in the same locality.  She and her
husband were town "characters"--weak ones.

Judson regarded her with mild interest and she regarded him with
what appeared to be apprehension.

"Well, Mrs. Hope," he asked, "what can we do for you?"

She was still breathing shortly and her little eyes were opening
and shutting like those of a nodding automaton in a Christmas
window.  She must have heard Judson's question, but she did not
answer.  Early spoke.

"Come, Melie," he snapped, impatiently, "what is it?  Want to pay
your bill, you say?  All right, pay it at the desk.  Mr. Judson'll
take care of you."

Mrs. Hope moved toward the desk, but she moved slowly and with
evident reluctance.  She paused and opened a reticule which looked
as if it were made of oilcloth, extracting therefrom a dirty piece
of paper--evidently the bill--and a very small packet of equally
dirty bank notes, folded and refolded.  She moved forward again
until she stood before the opening in the grill.  Carey Judson
extended a hand toward that opening.

"All right, Mrs. Hope," he said.  "Give it to me.  I'll take it."

But the lady did not give it to him.  Instead, clutching the notes
and the bill in her hand, she turned her troubled countenance
toward the manager.

"Is--is it all right to pay it to--to HIM, Mr. Early?" she asked,
anxiously.

"Why, of course it is.  Come on, Amelia, come on!  You're in a
hurry and so are we."

She did not "come on."  She glanced fearfully toward the man behind
the grill and then at Early.

"I--I'm payin' it in money," she said.  "'Tain't no check, it's
money."

Early laughed, impatiently.  "We'd just as soon have your money as
your check any day, Melie," he declared.  "Maybe a little sooner.
It's all right, give it to Mr. Judson.  He'll receipt your bill for
you."

Carey Judson smiled.  "You don't quite understand, Ben," he said.
"Pay Mr. Early if you had rather, Mrs. Hope.  You HAD rather,
hadn't you?"

Melie hesitated.  "I--I'd just as soon," she faltered.

Early looked puzzled.  "What in the world--?" he demanded.

Judson was still smiling.  "Just sound business caution on her
part," he observed.  "If you don't mind, Ben. . . .  Thanks."

He slid from the stool and started over to the window.  Early
impatiently jerked the bank notes from the caller's clutching
fingers, made change from the cash drawer, and hastily receipted
the bill.  Melie talked all the way from the desk to the door and,
still talking, was pushed through that door by the manager.  The
latter turned and looked at the bookkeeper, who was gazing out of
the window.

"Pesky fool!" snorted Early.

Judson turned.  "Yes?" he queried.  "What is it, Ben?"

Early stared.  "What's what?" he demanded. . . .  "Eh?  Why, good
Lord!  You didn't think I was talking to you, did you, Carey?"

"Weren't you?"

"No.  Well, yes, I was.  But I wasn't calling you a fool, 'tain't
likely.  I was talking about that Melie Hope and her husband.
There ought to be a law against half-wits like those two running
loose and getting married.  One ninny is bad enough, but when that
one marries another as bad as she is, what have you got then?"

"More, in the natural course of events, I should say."

"Eh?  What? . . .  Oh, I see!  Yes, yes.  Well, THAT hasn't
happened yet, thank goodness."

He regarded his companion for a moment and then added:

"Say, Carey, you aren't letting things like that bother you, are
you?  That woman is just a fool-head, and everybody knows it.
Don't pay any attention to her actions.  She don't count."

"All right, Ben."

"But I mean it.  And don't you let what folks say trouble you,
either.  They'll talk some for a while, but they'll forget it.
You've done all you could.  You're going to pay as much on the
dollar as any sensible person could expect you to do--yes, and more
than the law would have made you.  George has handled things mighty
well for you, and don't you forget it."

"Thanks.  I'll try and remember, Ben."

"That's right.  Let 'em talk.  You stick to your new job here and
forget what's past and gone.  They'll forget, too, by and by.  You
aren't the only man that's failed in business, not by a good deal."

"All right, Ben."

"Yes.  You just go right along, just as if nothing had happened.
Don't hide yourself nights and evenings and Sundays.  Go out and
meet folks and hold your head up.  After all, you're George
Judson's brother, you know, and that covers up a lot here in
Wellmouth.  Oh! and speaking of Sunday--that reminds me.  Why don't
you go to church to-morrow?  Our minister, Mr. Bagness, is the
smartest preacher in Ostable County.  You drop in to-morrow
forenoon.  'Twill do you good to hear him.  And it won't do you any
harm to be seen in church, either."

Judson's hand moved toward his forelock.

"He's going to preach about the prodigal son, I believe," he said.
"I noticed the title of his sermon on the church notice board."

"Is that so?  I hadn't heard.  Well, that always makes a good
sermon."

"Yes.  And my attendance would be apropos, I admit."

"What?"

"Nothing.  Thanks for the invitation, Ben.  I'll think it over.
Good night."

"Better come, Carey.  Well, good night."

The door closed.  Carey Judson, left alone once more in the outer
office, stood gazing from the window, his hands in his pockets.
One of the hands encountered a service-worn briar pipe.  Absently
he drew it forth and lifted it to his lips.  Then, remembering the
sign above the desk, "Positively No Smoking," he sighed and
returned the pipe to the pocket again.

Seen through the not overclean windowpanes was the wharf end, with
the little fore and aft schooner made fast to the rings in the
stringpiece.  Beyond was the harbor, shining, a golden blue, in the
sunshine of the late afternoon.  Scores of sea birds, gulls and
terns and sandpipers, sailed and swooped, or fluttered and dipped,
in their everlasting hunt for food.  He regarded them with a
sympathetic, understanding interest.  They, or their relatives and
ancestors, were old friends of his.  He alone, of the two thousand
and odd citizens of Wellmouth township--a township including
Wellmouth Center, East, South and West Wellmouth and Wellmouth
Neck--could have tagged each species of sea fowl with its
ornithological name, could have told where it nested in the nesting
season, how many and what sort of eggs were likely to be found in
the hit-or-miss nests in the sand, how the fledglings were fed by
the parents, everything concerning the birds, big or little.  He
envied them out there in the sunshine.  He would have changed
places with any one of them.  As a man he was a complete failure,
but as a gull--well, he believed he might have been a pretty
decent, perhaps even a successful, gull.

He was brought back from the air to the hard pine floor of the
office by a voice behind him.  It was a hoarse, masculine voice,
and there was a distinct note of sarcasm in it.

"Well," it drawled, "hard at work, I see!"

Judson turned.  The man who had spoken was a thickset individual,
with a long but rotund body, supported by a pair of short and
substantial legs.  The legs had a decided outward bow.  The face
above the body was broad and smooth-shaven and sunburned to a
clear, fiery red.  The nose was red and large and bulbous, and the
eyes, small, blue and twinkling, were set under heavy reddish gray
brows.  The figure was dressed in a suit of blue cloth, the
trousers and coat faded and wrinkled, but the waistcoat bright as
new.  Mr. Sherlock Holmes, noting the condition of the garments,
would have drawn the inference that, whereas the coat and trousers
were worn almost every day, the vest was donned only on important,
dress-up occasions.  Above the red face was a forehead, the full
extent of which was not visible, as it was covered by a broad-
brimmed, high-crowned, brown derby hat, canted well to port.  In
the starboard corner of the mouth was the stump of an extinguished
cigar.

Judson knew the man, of course.  He was Captain Tobias Higgins,
retired skipper and part owner of the whaling ship Ambergris.  He
had been in conference with George Judson in the latter's private
office, a conference dealing, so Carey guessed, with the affairs of
the late firm of Osborne and Judson.  He stood there, his big feet
well apart, chewing the stump of the cigar and eying the new
bookkeeper with a look of ironic solemnity.  Carey met the look
with one of bland interrogation.

"I beg your pardon?" he said.

Higgins grunted.  "You needn't," he observed.  "I forgive ye."

"Much obliged.  But you said something, didn't you?"

"Now you mention it, seems to me I did.  I said you 'peared to be
hard at work."

"Did I?  I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"Humph!  I can stand up under the disappointment.  You was pitching
in about as hard as I expected."

"Good!  You give me courage to keep on."

Captain Tobias pushed the brown derby backward until it hung at the
last possible angle of safety.  He rubbed his left eyebrow.

"Humph!" he grunted again.  "Well, Carey, I don't know as I ought
to mention it, but after all this good sensible talk of ours so
fur, do you cal'late you could come down to somethin' light and
frivolous like business?  I had a notion of payin' my bill.
Phoebe, my wife, seems to think I owe this consarn of your
brother's a little somethin'.  It can wait a spell longer, though,
if it's necessary.  I hate to take you away from what you was
doin'.  I spoke twice afore you heard me, so I judge 'twas
interestin'."

"It was.  I was looking at the gulls.  Did you ever think you would
like to be a gull, Cap'n?"

Captain Higgins stared.  "A gull?" he repeated.  "What in thunder
would I want to be a gull for?"

"I don't know.  So far as that goes, why should any one want to
be anything?  And what difference would it make if he did?  However
. . . now about that bill of yours?"  He walked behind the tall desk
and opened one of the books upon it.  "According to the records," he
said, "you owe this corporation seven dollars and eighteen cents.
As they aren't my figures, but those of the fellow who had this job
before me, I shouldn't wonder if they were correct.  What do you
say, Cap'n Higgins?"

Apparently the captain did not think it worth while to say anything
at the moment.  Puffing a little with the exertion, he pulled a fat
black wallet from the inside pocket of the blue coat, loosed the
strap which bound it together, and from the midst of a mass of
papers selected one.  Then, from another compartment he took a
small roll of bills secured by a rubber band.  He glanced at the
paper in his hand.

"Seven eighteen is the figger," he announced.  "And seven eighteen
she is."

He rolled to the desk beside Judson and, thrusting a bulky thumb
into his mouth for moistening purposes, counted off one five-dollar
bill and three ones.

"There you be," he said, pushing them across the desk.  Judson took
the money and, unlocking the cash drawer, counted out a sum in
silver and copper.

"And there you are," he added.  "Count it, please."

Higgins grunted again.  "I was cal'latin' to count it," he
retorted.  "I most generally do count what's comin' to me.  It pays
to be careful in this world."

"So they say.  You aren't as careful as some people, though.
Amelia Hope was in here just now to pay her bill and she is more
careful than you are."

"Eh?  Who?  'Melia Hope?  Melie G., you mean?  There ain't enough
in her head to make a meal's vittles for a hen.  What do you mean
by her bein' careful?"

"She wouldn't pay her money to me.  She insisted on paying it to
Ben.  She doesn't take any chances, you see.  Don't you think you
are rather reckless?"

Captain Tobias glanced quickly at the speaker.  "That depends on
how you look at it," he announced, with a grimly appreciative grin.
"I'll chance seven dollars' worth.  Anyhow, you hadn't ought to
expect me to be as smart as Melie G."

He paused again, glanced shrewdly at the face of his companion, and
added, in a tone a little less gruff:  "How are you gettin' on in
your new berth, Carey?  Kind of a rough passage 'long at first, is
it?"

Carey smiled.  "I suppose I am doing as well as might be expected,"
he announced.  "That depends--"

"Depends on who is doin' the expectin', eh?"

"That's it exactly."

"Um-hum.  Well, stick to the wheel.  George seems to cal'late
you'll make your ratin' all right."

"George is optimistic."

"He's what? . . .  Well, never mind, never mind.  I might not know
any better when you got through tellin' me, _I_ ain't ever been to
college.  But let me give you this one p'int.  It ain't my business
to set your course for you, boy, but if I was you I'd quit lettin'
the Melie G.'s and the rest of 'em make me sore.  Forget 'em.
See? . . .  Well, why don't you answer me?  What are you starin' at?
Nothin' the matter with my face, is there?"

Judson shook his head.

"No," he answered.  "No, your face is perfect."

"Humph!  It is, eh?  I want to know!  Then what are you owlin' at
it that way for?  You make me nervous."

"I was looking at your cigar."

"My cigar!"  The captain took the cigar stump from between his
lips.  "What ails that cigar?" he demanded.  "It's a good one.  I
paid ten cents for it."

"I know.  But it makes me envious, that's all.  They won't let me
smoke in here."

He pointed to the "No Smoking" placard.  Higgins looked at the sign
and snorted disgustedly.

"That's Ben Early's doin's," he sneered.  "He's too good to live,
that feller.  Don't you pay too much attention to him, neither.
_I_ don't. . . .  And NOW what are you laughin' at?"

"I wasn't laughing.  I was just thinking."

"Thinkin'!  You've always been thinkin' ever since I knew you.  If
you'd done less thinkin' and more doin' you'd have been better off.
What are you thinkin' about this time?"

"I was thinking that you and Ben seem to agree."

"We do, eh?  Then it is the first time.  What are him and I agreed
about?"

"Why, his advice seems to be the same as yours.  He says not to
trouble myself about what people say--or think.  He tells me to
forget, just as you do."

Captain Tobias' red face grew redder.  The statement seemed to
irritate him.

"Is that so!" he sputtered.  "Well, it's easy enough for him to
forget.  What's HE got to remember?  Nothin'.  He ain't seen the
money that he'd saved up and cal'lated to put by safe for a rainy
day go plumb to blazes.  He ain't seen it stole and carted off by a
damned swab that--  Humph!  Well, I'm talkin' too much, I guess.
Good night."

He turned to go, but paused at the threshold.

"I'm sorry I let off steam like that, Carey," he grumbled.  "What I
meant to do was just give you a little mite of a straight tip,
that's all.  This ain't liable to be a real happy v'yage you've got
ahead of you for the next six months.  No, and accordin' to my
notion it hadn't ought to be.  When a feller ships as mate it's his
job to see that the skipper don't run the ship on the rocks.  It
ain't enough to just stand by and--and look at the--at the--"

"At the gulls?"

"Why, yes," his indignation rising again.  "That's just it, if you
want to put it so.  My tip to you, now that you've come back to
Wellmouth here, is to forget what's gone and past and do your level
best to make good.  George has done all he can to help you.  He's
stood by you better than a whole lot of brothers would do, I can
tell you that.  Seems to me it's up to you to buckle right down to
hard work.  I don't suppose you like keepin' books in a fish store.
Seems like consider'ble of a comedown, I don't doubt, but--"

Judson stirred uneasily and lifted his hand.

"Never mind that, Cap'n," he interrupted.

"Eh?  Well, it's so, ain't it?  I was a good friend of your
father's; and I'm one of the ones that lost money by that thievin'
partner of yours.  Yes," in a still louder tone, "and by your
carelessness in lettin' him steal it.  So I've got the right to
talk, ain't I?"

"No doubt of it.  Every right."

"Seems so to me.  Well, then!  Your job is to work hard, whether
you like it or not.  Keep your mind on the books and not out of the
window and don't make any more mistakes or let anybody else make
'em. . . .  There!  I've got that off my chest.  Good night."

"Just a minute, Cap'n Higgins.  Speaking of mistakes.  Did you
count that change I just gave you?"

"Course I did.  I make it a p'int to count money--yes, and look
after it, too.  Always did--whether 'twas mine or my owner's,"
significantly.  "Why?"

"Ninety-two cents, wasn't there?"

"That's it.  Ninety-two is right."

"No, ninety-two is wrong.  Eighty-two is right.  You owe Judson and
Company a dime."

Tobias Higgins hastily did a sum in mental arithmetic.  The result
seemed to embarrass him.  He muttered something and reached into
his trousers pocket for the superfluous ten-cent piece.

"There!" he exclaimed, returning to slap the coin upon the desk.
"Now we're square, ain't we?"

"Now we're square."

"Humph!" suspiciously.  "That was a fool trick, I must say.  How
did you come to find out you'd given me ten cents too much?"

"Oh, I knew it when I gave it to you."

"You did!  Then what did you give it to me for?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I expected you to find out the
mistake yourself.  I judged you would expect me to make mistakes
and I hated to disappoint you.  I aim to please, you know."

Captain Tobias was, for the moment, speechless, an unusual
condition for him.  He choked, scowled and then shook his head.

"By the everlastin'!" he growled.  "I don't believe you've changed
a mite, in spite of everything.  You're just as big a--a crazy-head
as you ever was. . . .  Well, I'll be darned!"

He departed, slamming the door behind him.  Carey Judson smiled,
then sighed, swung off the stool and, walking over to the window,
relapsed into dreamy contemplation of his friends, the gulls.

A few minutes later George Judson came out of the private office.
He was, in every respect, a marked contrast to his older brother.
The latter was tall and thin.  George was of middle height and
thickset.  Carey was light-haired, George was dark.  George was
careful and neat as to dress, Carey was indifferent to what he wore
or how he wore it.  George was, and looked like, a successful,
practical man of business.  Only about the eyes and when they
smiled could one notice a resemblance.  But between them was a deep
and sincere affection.

When George spoke, his tone was brisk and authoritative, another
point in which he differed from his brother.

"All right, Carey," he said, cheerfully.  "We can call it a day, I
guess.  Lock up."

Carey turned from the window, took the books from the desk, placed
them in the safe, swung the heavy door shut and whirled the dial of
the combination lock.

"Come on," urged the head of the firm of J. C. Judson & Co.  "We'll
be late for supper, I'm afraid, and Cora won't like that a bit,
especially as Aunt Susan is there, you know."

Carey looked at him.

"Oh, she came, did she?" he said.

"Yes.  Came on the afternoon train.  The train was late, nearly
half an hour, and she sputtered about that, just as she did when
she was here last.  That was years ago and she hasn't changed a
bit.  She asked about you, of course.  She'll be glad to see you."

Carey Judson did not answer.  He did not deny his brother's
assertion, but he doubted it, at least in the meaning in which it
was uttered.  If Aunt Susan Dain would really be glad to see him it
would be only because she could then have the opportunity of
letting him know what she thought of him.

He took his smart straw hat--relic of last year's fancied
prosperity--from the hook in the closet and, in company with his
brother, went out to face again the ordeal which he dreaded, that
of walking through Wellmouth streets under the eyes of the
Wellmouth citizens whom his incompetency and criminal carelessness
had defrauded.



CHAPTER II


It was an evening in early June, that on which George and Carey
Judson left the office of J. C. Judson & Co. and started on the
walk to the home of the former.  Wellmouth was quiet and peaceful,
its serenity undisturbed, its Saturday night suppers of baked beans
and brown bread already on the tables of its householders or
awaiting the arrival of fathers or sons on their way home from
stores and shops--or, in rarer instances, of belated summer
boarders or city relatives "down on vacation," who, out "codding"
or "mackereling," had allowed sport to render them forgetful of
time.  The Boston morning newspapers, brought down by the noon
train, had been distributed and read long before and nothing in
their contents was of particular, intimate interest to Wellmouthians.
A sensation--even a sensation such as the Osborne and Judson
failure--becomes an old story in six months and, although Wellmouth
had not forgotten it, and, because of its disastrous consequences
to so many citizens, was not likely to forget it for many a year,
it had ceased to regard it as the only worthwhile subject of
conversation.  Even Carey Judson's progress, in his brother's
company, from Wharf Lane to the Main Road and along the Main Road to
the remodeled towered and dormered residence on Lookout Hill was no
longer of such interest as to distract the attention of an impatient
housewife from the consequences attendant upon an indefinite delay
of supper.

Such a housewife, peering from the dining-room window, may have
sniffed disdainfully at the sight of the brothers as they walked
home together.  She may have declared, as some of them did, that
she should think Carey Judson would be ashamed to have the face to
be seen among the folks he had swindled; but it was merely a casual
remark expressive of a settled conviction.  Carey Judson was a
disgrace, and every one admitted it, but the reasons why he was a
disgrace had been discussed and dissected and vivisected at homes
and at sewing circles and after and before church on Sunday until
even those who had suffered most were tired of the subject.  When
the disgrace himself first returned to the village his shame and
its course were subjected to a second picking to pieces, but he had
been in Wellmouth for a fortnight now, and even his brazen
effrontery in coming back and his brother's soft-heartedness in
allowing him to do so were getting to be old stories.

The mine had exploded late on an evening in the previous December.
A telegram to George Judson first brought the news.  George had
said nothing concerning it, and the station agent--who was also the
telegraph operator--could not have disclosed its contents, for he
was supposed to keep all telegrams a secret.  But some one told,
and that some one told others.  Before Wellmouth went to bed that
night rumor of the disaster which might mean not only the
shattering of an idol, but financial loss to so many, was buzzing
in every dwelling from Wellmouth Neck to South Wellmouth.

The next morning the buzz had become a roar.  Those who hastened to
see George Judson at his office found that he had taken the early
morning train for Boston.  Then to Captain Benijah Griffin came a
reply to his telegram of inquiry, the latter sent to a nephew, a
Boston business man.  The message was brief, but as sharply pointed
as a lancet.  "Osborne and Judson failure announced four o'clock
yesterday.  Looks bad.  Morning papers give all known about it so
far."

That was all, but, like the announcement of a fatal accident, it
was a sufficiently definite declaration that the worst had
happened.  Osborne and Judson--the firm to which at least fifty men
and women of Wellmouth had intrusted their surplus or their savings
for investment--Osborne and Judson had failed and the failure
"looked bad."  "For further particulars see morning papers."

That noon Griggs' Store, at the junction of the Main Road and Wharf
Lane, was crowded with what the Item, later described as a
"seething mob."  There were at least thirty-five people in Griggs'
store when the depot wagon drew up at its platform, and all of the
thirty-five were eagerly and, in so many instances, anxiously
excited.  Outside, by the platform and moored to the hitching posts
near it, were horses attached to buggies and surreys and carryalls
and blue "truck wagons."  The horses gnawed at the already well-
gnawed tops of the posts and pawed at the clam-shells of the frozen
road.  Inside, at the counter near the rack of letter boxes--Isaiah
Griggs was postmaster as well as storekeeper--their owners fought
for copies of the Boston dailies.

The depot wagon had brought the bundles containing the latter and,
behind the counter, Sam Griggs, the postmaster's son, was opening
and assorting the contents.  Distribution of the morning papers was
always a lively session, particularly during a political campaign
or on the day following elections, but then there was loud
laughter, joking, and boisterous confusion.  Now, as the men pushed
and crowded about the counter, no one joked and no one laughed.

Young Griggs, his sorting finished and the papers arranged in
piles, found it difficult to keep them out of reach of clutching
hands.

"Hold on, there!" he ordered, indignantly.  "Let alone of those
Journals, can't you?  You'll get yours, Eben, in a minute.  Give me
time!  Take your turn! . . .  Now then:  Sam Davis, one Globe . . .
James Snow, one Advertiser . . . Eben Bailey, one Journal.  There!
you've got it; I hope you're satisfied . . . Tobias Higgins, one
Globe.  Eh?  What do you want two for?  I don't know as I can spare
you an extra Globe to-day, Cap'n Higgins. . . .  Well, well! take
it then, take it!  Can't stop to argue with you now.  Take it and
clear out.  Only, if somebody else has to go without, you and
him'll have to settle it between you. . . .  Moses Gould, one
Journal. . . .  Stop your shovin'!  Take your TURNS!"

Captain Tobias, his two copies of the Boston Daily Globe tightly
clutched in a sunburned fist, elbowed and pushed his way through
the struggling crowd.  Having fought his way clear he folded one of
the papers and jammed it into his hip pocket and, crossing the shop
to a comparatively secluded spot by the side window, he spread open
the other, adjusted his spectacles, and gazed fearfully at the
front page.  Almost instantly he found what he was looking for.
The headlines jumped at him.

"Disastrous Failure of a State Street Banking House.  Firm of
Osborne and Judson Bankrupt.  Senior Partner Missing.  Rumors of
Crookedness and Embezzlement.  Sensation in Financial Circles."

This was the scarehead.  Beneath it were two columns of fine print,
the second column ending with "Continued on page 2."  Tobias
Higgins began to read.


The Boston business and financial world received a shock late
yesterday afternoon when announcement was made of the failure of
Osborne and Judson, bankers and brokers, whose offices were located
at No. -- State Street.  The firm, although not an old one--the
partnership having existed less than eight years--was considered
one of the soundest in the city, and its collapse, under
circumstances which are reported to be most suspicious, was a
complete surprise to the public.  Particulars are as yet
unobtainable, no authoritative statement having been given out, but
the senior partner, Graham G. Osborne, is neither at the office nor
at his Marlboro Street residence and it is said that he cannot be
located.  A rumor, as yet unconfirmed, declares that a warrant for
his arrest has been issued and that the police are in search of
him.  Other rumors are to the effect that practically all the
securities intrusted to the firm by investors have disappeared and
it is feared that they have been sold and the proceeds dissipated
in speculation by Osborne.  The junior--and only other--partner, J.
Carey Judson, is said to be in a state of collapse and, at his
bachelor apartments at No. -- Mount Vernon Street, it was declared
that his physician permitted him to see no one.  Those in charge at
the State Street office decline to give any information, but will,
so it is said, issue a statement to-morrow.

The firm of Osborne and Judson was founded in 1876.  Graham
Osborne, the senior partner, now missing, is forty-two years of
age.  He was for twelve years in the employ of Jacoby, Coningsby
and Cole, the well-known banking house on Congress Street, where he
was highly esteemed and, during the later years of his employment
there, occupied positions of trust and responsibility.  He--


Captain Tobias, having read thus far, skipped the two paragraphs
following and began again at the third.


James Carey Judson, the junior partner (he read) is thirty-three
years old.  He is the son of the late James Carey Judson, of
Wellmouth, Cape Cod, where his younger brother, George Judson,
carries on the wholesale fish business founded by the father.  The
Judson firm is one of the best known in its line on the Cape and
the family is one of the oldest and most prominent in that section.
James Carey Judson, the elder brother, graduated from Amherst in--


Higgins read no further at the time.  A cursory glance at the
remainder of the article showed him that, so far as news was
concerned, it was entirely lacking.  There were more historical
details concerning the late Captain Jim-Carey Judson and the Judson
family generally, but Tobias, like every Wellmouth citizen, was
acquainted with those.  He folded the paper he had been reading and
jammed it into the hip pocket containing the other and unopened
copy.  Then, without waiting for the distribution of the mail--a
most unusual omission on his part--he moved between the groups of
townsfolk crowding the store and headed for the door.

These groups made way for him only under physical compulsion.  Each
member of each group was clutching an open newspaper in his hand
and tongues were busy.  The general hum of excited conversation was
punctuated by exclamations and outbreaks either of wrathful
indignation or sorrowful surprise.  Of these emotions the former
were by far the more prevalent.  Tobias caught snatches of the talk
as he pushed by.

"In a state of collapse, eh?  He ought to be.  If he showed his
head down here 'twould be collapsed for him. . . .  Not a cent!
No, sir-ee, I never let 'em have a cent of MY money!  I know
better. . . .  This will be some knock in the eye for Cora T.,
won't it?  She'll have to come down off her high horse.  Brother-
in-law a thief and bound for jail, she won't be puttin' on so many
airs, maybe. . . .  Well, his PARTNER'S a thief, anyhow; it says so
in the paper."

The group next near the door were discussing the sensation from
another angle.  The remarks caught by the captain, as he passed,
were in a lower key.

"Cap'n Bill Doane will be hit hard.  He put about all he made when
he sold his half of the Flora in Carey's hands to invest for him.
Told me only last week he was getting five and a half per cent on
the average. . . .  Old Mrs. Bangs--Erastus' widow--will lose about
all her insurance money if this turns out to be so.  She swore by
the Judsons.  Erastus worked for the Judsons till he died. . . .
How about the Sayleses?  Lawyer Simeon Sayles and Cap'n Jim-Carey
were chums all their lives.  I KNOW a lot of their money was bein'
taken care of by Osborne and Judson, because Desire Sayles told my
wife so, herself, last time Desire and Emily were down here--last
summer 'twas. . . .  Enough to make Cap'n Jim-Carey turn over in
his grave.  Young Carey was his pet. . . .  Mighty tough on George
Judson, too.  George swore by Carey, he did."

At the door Captain Tobias encountered the Reverend Ezekiel Thomas.
Mr. Thomas was--and had been for thirty years--pastor of the old
First Church, the aristocratic "meeting-house" of Wellmouth.  The
minister's white hair was little whiter than his face as he
acknowledged Higgins' good morning.  He paused to ask a question.

"Is it true, Tobias?" he inquired, anxiously.

Tobias nodded.

"It's true," he replied.  "The papers have got a lot about it.
They've failed--busted to smash.  Don't seem to be any doubt of
that."

Mr. Thomas caught his breath.

"Oh, dear!" he gasped.  "Oh, dear me!  And--and is the rest of it
true?  Is it as bad as--as they say it is?"

"Bad enough, I cal'late.  Looks as if Osborne was a thief and had
run away--cleared out.  The police are after him."

"And--and Mr. Judson?  Carey, I mean?"

"I don't know.  All it says here is that Carey is sick abed and the
doctors won't let anybody run afoul of him.  Don't know whether he
helped with the stealin' or not."

"Oh, I hope not!  I hope not!  I have known him since he was a boy.
He was one of my boys in Sunday School.  I can't think HE is
dishonest."

"Humph!  Well, it's kind of hard for me to think so.  I never
cal'lated he had--"

"Yes?  Had what?"

The captain grunted.  "Had ambition enough to take to stealin'," he
answered.  "He's always seemed to me too darned lazy for that."

The minister shook his head.

"I know what you mean, of course," he admitted.  "But I--  Oh,
dear!  He is unlike his brother, that is true.  Mr. George Judson
is--"

"He's a worker, that's what he is.  And always was.  He was a smart
boy and now he's a smart man.  Look what he's doin' with his
father's business.  HE never had everything he asked for and a
whole lot he didn't.  If Cap'n Jim-Carey had treated his oldest boy
the way he done George, Carey might have amounted to somethin',
too.  But he didn't--he sp'iled him.  And I never see a sp'iled
young-un come to anything yet."

"But Carey was always such a GOOD boy."

"Good!  He was always too lazy to be anything BUT good. When George
was pluggin' away in the old man's office and Carey come down here
on his vacations--what was he doin' then?  Nothin'--nothin' at all!
A dozen times when I've been over on the beach, gunnin' or hand-
linin' or somethin', I've run afoul of Carey Judson and every time
he was just settin' sprawled out in the sand with a pair of
spyglasses, lookin' at all creation in general and nothin' in
particular, so far as I could find out.  Watchin' the gulls and
coots and shelldrakes and critters like that, that's what he said
he was doin' when I asked him.  Healthy job for a grown-up young
feller, that is--spyin' at a passel of birds!  If he'd had a gun or
a line with him I'd have understood.  I like to shoot and fish as
well as anybody.  But he--why, my godfreys; he had the face to tell
me once that he didn't like to kill things unless 'twas needful.
Said he always felt as if 'twas only good luck--or bad, he said he
wasn't sure which--that they picked him out to be man instead of
one of them ducks off yonder.  I flared up; a feller's patience
will stand about so much and no more.  Says I, 'Well, Carey, I
don't know about a duck, but I cal'late you'd make a pretty fair
LOON.  And you wouldn't have had to change much neither.'  That's
what I said, and I walked off and left him. . . .  Good!  Bah!  He
was GOOD enough, fur's that goes.  But it ain't much of a trick to
be good when there's nothin' worth while bein' bad for."

Mr. Thomas sighed.  "He was always so kind and--and generous," he
observed.

The statement seemed to ruffle the captain more than ever.
"Generous!" he snorted.  "Anybody can be generous with money that
comes as easy as his did.  And good natured!  Say, if he hadn't
been so everlastin' good natured I'd have had more patience with
him.  I like to see a feller get mad once in a while; shows there's
something TO him.  Take it that time when I called him a loon--did
he get mad then?  Not much he never!  I'D have knocked the man that
called me that halfway acrost the beach.  But all he done was grin,
in that lazy way of his, and says he, 'Well, Cap'n,' he says, 'I
don't know but bein' a loon has some advantages.  A loon generally
gets the fish he goes after.'  And he knew darned well I'd been
heavin' and haulin' that line of mine the whole forenoon and hadn't
had a strike.  Bah!"

"But every one liked him."

"Well, what of it?  You don't call that anything to brag of, do
you?  When you find a man that all hands like it's my experience
you want to keep your weather eye on him.  You never heard that
everybody liked me, did you?  You bet you never! . . .  Well,
there!" he broke off, disgustedly.  "What's the use of all this
kind of talk?  They won't many of 'em say they like him now, I
cal'late.  There's too many hard earned dollars been--". . .  He
paused and then added, with some hesitation, "Say, Mr. Thomas, it
ain't any of my business, but I do hope YOU wasn't soft-headed
enough to trust any of your money with that Osborne and Judson
gang.  YOU don't stand to lose anything by 'em, do you?"

The minister tried to smile, but the attempt was not a success.

"Oh, a little," he confessed.  "A little, that's all."

Higgins looked troubled.  "I see," he said.  "A little, eh?  But a
little too much, I presume likely.  Well, accordin' to what I hear,
some people in this town are liable to lose a lot.  It's too bad!
It's a shame!  Why don't they stick to savin's banks and solid
places like that? . . .  Well, maybe 'tain't so bad as it looks to
be now.  You can't always tell by the newspapers.  I've seen 'em
have a Republican all sot and elected one day and the next have to
crawl and come out with the truth about the decent candidate
winnin'.  Maybe it's all a mistake, the worst of it.  I hope so."

"So do I.  Indeed I do!  And not entirely on my own account, I
assure you.  Poor Carey!  At all events, I am very glad you didn't
have any money invested with them, Tobias."

Captain Higgins had turned to go, but now he turned back.

"Don't be too glad," he said, dryly.  "I've got seven hundred
dollars planted there, waitin' for the tombstone."

"You have?  You!  Why, I thought you said--"

"I say a lot, but I don't always do what I say.  I'm as big a
jackass as anybody, when the average is struck.  Yes, I handed over
seven hundred when I sold my cranberry swamp last April. . . .
Well, to-morrow we'll know more and feel better, maybe.  The
'statement' will be out by then."

The statement issued by the insolvent firm was printed in the
papers the next morning, but it was anything but reassuring to the
anxious creditors of Osborne and Judson.  And the developments
which followed confirmed their worst surmises and forebodings.
These developments came thick and fast for weeks.  Graham Osborne,
traced by the police to a hotel in a southern city, shot himself
when the officers came to his room to arrest him.  He had less than
a thousand dollars with him and the problem of what had become of
the firm's capital and that placed in its care by trustful
investors was solved only too quickly and completely for the peace
of mind of the trustful ones.  Osborne's life was not a long one,
but the last five years of it must have been merry, if indulgence
in every sort of expensive luxury, legitimate or otherwise,
furnishes merriment.  The list of his race horses and card clubs
and establishments of various kinds was lengthy and there were
items in it which supplied Wellmouth circles--particularly its
sewing circles--with scandalous material sufficient to keep them
busy all winter.  The horses were supposed to be fast, but they had
failed to prove that supposition on the tracks.  The bets at the
card clubs were said to have been high, but they merely lowered the
resources of the bettor.  As for the establishments--well, their
fastness was sufficiently proven, goodness knows, but they merely
put their maintainer further behind.

The rest of it, so far as Osborne was concerned, was the ancient
story of attempted recuperation by way of the stock market with the
inevitable result.  Such personal means as he possessed were
exhausted early in the game; those of the firm and its customers
were sent in vain pursuit.  There remained of the wreck little more
than a heap of worthless notes and some equally worthless
securities.  The banking and broking house of Osborne and Judson
was as dead as the senior partner who had killed it and himself.

But the junior partner still lived and upon his head fell the wrath
of every sufferer.  The creditors wanted to know--the newspapers
wanted to know--the great crowd of casually interested readers of
those papers wanted to know what on earth he had been doing while
the pilfering was going on.  If he, himself, was not a thief--and
it looked as if he was not--then where had he been all the time?
What sort of a partner was he to neglect the business, to let his
associate walk off with everything portable and, when the crash
came, be, apparently, as dumbfounded and overwhelmed as, for
example, Uncle Gaius Beebe, who declared himself so took aback he
just lay to with his canvas slattin', knowin' that he ought to pray
for strength, but too weak even to cuss.  More so, for Uncle Gaius
said a great deal, whereas Carey Judson said absolutely nothing.

The papers said it for him, however.  It being evident that the
surviving partner of Osborne and Judson was a promising subject for
interesting development, the editors set about developing him and
his history.  Reporters came to Wellmouth and obtained the stories
they were in search of.  Readers of the Boston dailies learned of
Captain Jim-Carey's rise from skipper of a Banks schooner to one of
Cape Cod's wealthiest and most influential merchants.  They learned
and wrote and printed the life story of J. Carey Judson, Junior:
how he had been his father's pride and pet; how he had attended the
local school until, quoting from Uncle Gaius and others, "that
wan't high-toned enough for him" and he had been sent to an
expensive private school and then to college.  And how, when his
college years were ended, Captain Jim-Carey had set him up in
business with Osborne at considerable expense.


In order [wrote one capable reporter] to understand why so many of
Judson's fellow townsfolk were led to invest their savings with him
and his associate, the correspondent interviewed a number of
Wellmouth citizens.  It seems that Captain Judson, Senior, had, for
years before his death, been accustomed to help his friends and
neighbors with their investments.  In every case, apparently, his
judgment was good and the investment profitable.  He was a director
in the local bank, prominent in town and county affairs, and
respected and trusted by every one, not only in his own community,
but in much wider circles.  When he provided the capital to start
his older son in business it was taken for granted that he knew
what he was doing, as he usually did.  He carried on his own
somewhat extensive buying of securities through Osborne and Judson
and he encouraged his friends to do the same.  After his death the
custom continued on their part.  Carey Judson was a Cape man, and
the son of one of the most honored and honorable men on the Cape.
It was, therefore, natural that when Wellmouth citizens had money
to invest they should continue to ask the son of their friend and
mentor in money matters to take care of it for them.  Mr. George
Judson, now head of J. C. Judson & Co., is as respected and trusted
locally as was his father.  It is reported that he and his firm
have lost much by the Osborne and Judson failure but he, George
Judson, refuses to believe a word concerning his brother's possible
knowledge of Osborne's crookedness or implication in it.  He
declares--and a considerable portion of Wellmouth, including some
who have suffered heavy losses, seems to agree with him--that Carey
Judson was entirely innocent of any actual wrongdoing.  He--George
Judson--stated in a short interview, the only one he has given the
press, that his brother was never a business man, that he never
cared for or seemed to understand money matters and that, in his
opinion, at the time and since, Judson Senior made a great mistake
in insisting upon making a banker out of his elder son.  "He seemed
to be doing well," Mr. Judson went on to say.  "When I asked him
about the business he always appeared satisfied, and he always had
plenty of money when he came down here on his vacations or to spend
a holiday.  But he never talked about financial matters of his own
accord and his interest was, I believe, as it had always been,
elsewhere.  He was very fond of nature and natural history and I
have heard father tell him, more than once during his college
years, that he knew a lot more about the birds and animals up
around Amherst than he seemed to know about his studies.  He
graduated with fair marks, however, and I think he worked hard
there, but principally to please father.  The old gentleman was
proud of him and doted on him, and Carey returned the feeling.
That was why he consented to be a banker, to please father.  I know
that, because he told me so.  But it was a mistake, a bad mistake.
A slick scamp such as Osborne seems to have been could wind Carey
around his finger--and that is just what he did, of course.  Carey
is as transparent and honest as the daylight.  Every one trusted
him and he trusted every one.  There isn't a crooked bone in his
body; I say so and I know.  He is taking all this terribly hard,
but his friends are going to stand back of him, don't forget it."


This from George Judson; but from others, less charitable, came
stories of Carey's eccentricities, his "queerness" and his
impracticability.  They were interesting tales, funny, some of
them, and they made good reading.  Thousands of people chuckled
over them during that December and January.  Carey, himself, slowly
recovering in the hospital, from the collapse and nervous breakdown
which followed the shock of the failure, read some of the stories,
in spite of the care of the nurses to keep the papers out of his
hands.  He did not chuckle.  Every sneer, every jibe at his
carelessness and the ridiculously incompetent manner in which he
had neglected to keep the slightest watch upon the actions of his
partner or the money intrusted to him by people whom he had known
all his life, seared his sensitive conscience like the touch of a
red hot iron.  He did not resent the sneering criticism; he felt
that he deserved it all and more.

George had promised to stand by him through his trouble and he kept
that promise.  It was George who undertook the Herculean task of
helping the receivers straighten out the tangled affairs of the
bankrupt house.  Carey's first thought, when he grew strong enough
to think clearly of anything, was concerning the friends and
neighbors who had lost their money through him.  He had a few
personal possessions and these, he made his brother promise, must
be disposed of and the proceeds used to help pay the little which
could be paid.  His father had left him some real estate on the
Cape and that was sold.  He owned half of the house and land, the
former residence of Captain Jim-Carey on Lookout Hill, and George,
who owned the other half, bought Carey's share and moved into the
old home himself, something his wife had been urging him to do for
years.  Carey's carefully collected library, including the rare
volumes on the birds and animals of New England, went to the
auction rooms.  Even the furniture of his apartment in Mount Vernon
Street went with the rest.  Everything, even the few bits of
jewelry, family heirlooms, were sold, everything but Captain Jim-
Carey's gold "repeater," presented to him by the people of
Wellmouth as a thank offering for his labors in bringing the
railroad to the town a full year ahead of the scheduled time.  That
watch George flatly refused to sell.  He kept it himself, but only
in trust for his older brother.

During the months while the Osborne and Judson snarl was in process
of straightening, Wellmouth's resentful animosity toward the
betrayer of its trust had slackened just a little.  George's
attitude and his unswerving confidence in his brother's innocence
of intentional wrongdoing helped to soften the feeling.  Then, too,
there was the hope that some of the invested money might be
returned to the investors.  But when preliminary announcements were
made and the hopeful ones realized how little of each dollar was to
come back to their pockets, much of the resentment came back also.
Again Carey Judson's name was spoken at every breakfast, dinner and
supper table, and, although pity was expressed, very little of it
was wasted on him.

Then came the news that the black sheep was to be led back to the
home fold.  He was to return to Wellmouth, to live with his brother
in the big house on the hill, and to keep books in the office of J.
C. Judson & Co.  Ed Nye, the former bookkeeper, had accepted the
offer of a job in Boston, and Carey was to have his place.

Then the tongues wagged.  The cheek of the fellow!  The bare-faced
effrontery of him--his "everlastin' gall," Captain Tobias Higgins
called it.  To come back to his native town, to live and work among
the neighbors he had cheated--it was unbelievable, it could not be
true.  Or, if it was, he would find Wellmouth the chilliest spot
this side of the North Pole.  They would let him see what they
thought of him.  Even if he was George's brother--and George was a
smart man and an honest man and a good fellow--even so, George was
carrying things a little mite too far, and they would make that
fact plain to him.  They would do almost anything for George, but
they would not take that thieving brother of his to their bosoms,
not by a considerable sight they wouldn't.

The Reverend Mr. Bagness preached a sermon dealing with the wages
of sin and during his discourse he raised the sinner's salary.

"And he's going to live in his own father's house," cried Mrs.
Captain Horatio Loveland, one of the local aristocrats, whose own
jig-sawed and cupolaed residence was also on Lookout Hill and
fronted a spacious yard with two green iron deer and a black iron
fountain in it, not to mention an iron hitching post at the gate,
the post representing a negro boy holding aloft a ring.  The paint
on the negro boy's face was scaling off in spots, giving him a
leprous appearance, but his attitude was indicative of pride and
prosperity.  "He is going to live THERE," repeated Mrs. Loveland.
"In the very house that belonged to the father he disgraced.  I
never heard of such brazen--er--brassiness in my life.  I must say
I should think George Judson would know better.  But he is like
Cap'n Jim-Carey, when it comes to being silly about that brother of
his.  Well, I wonder what Cora T. thinks of it.  I rather guess SHE
doesn't like the idea--much."

Mrs. Loveland's guess was correct.  "Cora T."--her maiden name had
been Cora Tryphosa Peters--was George Judson's wife.  She had lived
in South Harniss before her marriage and her family were everyday
people, her masculine parent getting his living by providing the
community with clams and lobsters in the season.  But when this
fact is called to mind it should also be mentioned that Mrs. Judson
had carefully forgotten it.  What she took pains to remember, and
have others remember, was that she was now the wife of the head of
J. C. Judson & Co.  She was a good-looking, dark-haired woman of
ample proportions, and her chin, beneath its fleshy upholstery, was
squarely framed.

When her husband announced his intention of not only bringing Carey
back to Wellmouth, but to a room and meals in their home, that chin
became squarer than ever.  Also it moved rapidly.  She declared she
had never heard of such a crazy idea in her life.  And she did not
intend to hear any more of it.

She did, however, hear a good deal more.  George went on to
explain.  He was worried about Carey.  The latter was in miserable
physical condition, and his mental state was worse.

"He is half sick," he continued, "and almost crazy with the
dreadful experience he has been through."

"Well, he ought to be," snapped the lady.  "And as for his coming
back to Wellmouth, to say nothing of your bringing him here to live
with us--well, I should say you were as crazy as he is.  He can't
come here.  He shan't.  I won't have him.  What do you think the
folks he's cheated will say?  What do you think the Lovelands will
say?  And the Halls?  And Emily Sayles and her mother?  What do you
think everybody will say?  Living here, with us, in comfort and
luxury, just as if nothing had happened, as if he was as honest as--
as you are."

Her husband interrupted.  "He is honest," he declared.  "There
never was a straighter fellow than Carey."

"Rubbish!  You can't make me believe any such nonsense as that,
George Judson.  And you don't really believe it yourself.  You only
pretend you do because he is your brother and you have always let
him make a perfect fool of you.  Don't I know?  Haven't I seen it
ever since I knew both of you?  He was always your father's pet and
could have every blessed thing he wanted by just asking for it,
while you had to work and work like--like a man digging sand in the
road--to get the little you have got.  While your father lived, and
before we were married it used to make me SO mad to see how that
Carey always had his own way, did just what he wanted to, and you--"

George broke in again.  "You're wrong there, Cora," he said.  "If
Carey had had everything he wanted he never would have gone into
business.  He hated business.  He wanted to be a naturalist, or a
scientist, one of those fellows that work for the museums and such
places.  He would have done well at that, I'm sure."

"Then why didn't he do it?  Don't talk so silly!  If he had told
your father he wanted to do that, he would have been let do it.  Of
course he would, no matter how ridiculous it was."

"No, he wouldn't.  Father was set in his mind about that.  The only
times I ever saw him lose his temper with Carey were when they got
on that subject.  Carey told father he would never be any good in
the banking business.  Yes, and I said so, too.  The only real row
we three ever had was when I took Carey's part and said it was a
mistake to try and make a stockbroker out of a man that didn't know
a dividend from an assessment.  But, you see, father was awfully
stubborn in some things.  He always planned exactly what we boys
were going to do.  And--"

"Oh, don't tell me any more about it!  I tell you I won't hear it."

She turned angrily to the door, but her husband was standing on the
threshold and he made no move to let her pass.

"I want you to hear it, Cora," he persisted, mildly.  "You ought to
hear it, you know.  You don't understand Carey as I do."

"I understand him well enough and I understand what he is, too;
just the way all the folks in town understand.  And YOU might as
well understand, once and for all, that he shan't come to work in
your office, to say nothing of living here with us.  That's final."

George shook his head.  "I wish you wouldn't feel so, Cora," he
urged.  "It is all planned for Carey to start in on the books a
week from Monday after next, and I am going up to Boston to get him
and bring him down to the house the first of next week.  He can
have the room over the back parlor.  He will be by himself there,
and he won't be in the way or the least trouble to anybody."

Then the storm broke.  The weather had been increasingly
threatening ever since the beginning of the interview, but now
there was what the weather bureau would have called "high winds,
increasing to gale force, accompanied by heavy rain squalls."  Cora
T. was accustomed to rule her husband and, usually, he accepted the
rule with meekness and docility.  But on rare occasions he stood
his ground.  It was so now.  Mrs. Judson stormed and threatened and
pleaded and, at last, wept.  But George remained firm and, like the
house founded upon a rock, refused to be blown--or washed--from his
foundations.

"Carey is the only brother I've got, Cora," he told her.  "He is in
trouble, awful trouble, and, if he was left alone, as helpless as
he is and feeling as he does, I don't know what he might do.  I
want him here where I can keep an eye on him.  He needs me and I am
going to stand by him.  He has stood by me--yes, and taken more
than one licking for me, when we were kids."

His wife, seated in the rocking chair, a picture of despairing
abandonment, raised her head and fixed a pair of streaming eyes
upon the Rogers group on its stand by the window.

"And--and I'm the--the only wife you've got," she wailed.

"Now, Cora, dear--"

"Don't you 'dear' me. . . .  Well, I suppose I've got to have him
here.  When you get this way you're as pig-headed as your father
ever thought of being--and worse.  But I tell you this, George
Judson, if you expect me to be palavering and soft-soaping to that
scamp of a brother of yours you'll find yourself mistaken.  I'll
treat him just barely decent--you'll make me do that, I suppose--
but I WON'T have him associating with my friends, and when I have
parties, and--and--"

"There! there!  You needn't worry.  He'll be the last to want to
come to parties.  I am awfully sorry you feel this way, Cora, but
I've got to do it.  It's--well, it's my duty, as I see it, and it
is going to be done.  Forgive me, Cora, dear, and--"

"I won't forgive you.  And as for forgiving HIM--o-oh! . . .  Well,
I tell you this much more: you've got to hire another girl for me
and get her right away.  The Lovelands keep two now, and Emeline
Hall told me she expected she'd have to keep two pretty soon.  And
you've got as much money as her husband has, I HOPE.  If another
great hulking man is going to be here to cook for and wait on I'm
going to keep extra help, that's all."

"Why--why, of course, Cora.  Get another girl, if you can find one.
I told you that before.  Now kiss me, and--"

"I shan't kiss you.  You can kiss that Carey, if you want to.  I
wonder you don't.  You think a lot more of him than you do of me.
When I ask you anything--when I beg you on my bended knees--do you
pay any attention to me?  Indeed you don't!  I've been telling you
all winter that I need a new sealskin coat."

"Get your coat, get your coat.  I said I wanted you to have one."

"Yes, you did!" sarcastically.  "But you didn't tell me where I
could find one at the price you said you could afford to pay.
Sarah Loveland has got one--oh, yes! she has got one!  HER husband
can afford ANYTHING.  If that precious Carey of yours wanted
sealskins or diamonds or anything else all he would have to do is
hint, just as he hinted that he wanted to come down here and have
us take care of him--"

This was too much.  George Judson's eyes and mouth opened.  "Here!
Hold on!" he ordered.  "What is that you say?  That Carey ASKED to
come down here to Wellmouth to work--and live!  My heavens and
earth!  I've been trying for over a month to make him see that he
ought to come--that he must come.  And for the first three weeks of
that month all he would say was no; and even yet he hasn't really
promised.  And if he ever does agree to do it, it will be only to
please me.  I want him here because I'm scared to let him go
anywhere by himself.  Being in this town, as sensitive as he is and
feeling as he does, is going to be hell for him--just plain hell."

Mrs. Judson bounced from the rocker.

"There!" she cried, wildly.  "That's enough.  That's the last
straw.  Swearing at your wife is something new for you to do, but I
might have expected it.  It goes along with the rest.  I suppose
you'll be striking me next.  Go away from me.  Go down to your old
fish store.  There is plenty of swearing down there, from what I
hear, and you'll be right at home. . . .  Go, this minute!"

George went.  And, as he walked briskly down to what his wife
contemptuously called his "old fish store," his sense of amazed
resentment at her idea that it could be Carey who had asked to
return to that store and the town in which it was situated--to say
nothing of occupying a room in the house which had been his boyhood
home--grew and grew.  If Cora only knew!  If she might have been
present at some of the interviews between the brothers.

When the subject was first broached by George, Carey had flatly
refused to listen.  So, at the second broaching and the third.
Carey did not know what he should do and, apparently, did not care.
If he were unfortunate enough to recover from his present illness
he supposed he should have to go somewhere and do something, but
they would be a somewhere and something which would take him as far
as possible from all who had ever known him.

"Why, good God, George!" he said, raising himself on his elbow in
the hospital cot.  "What are you talking about?  Do you suppose I
shall let myself be a burden on you for the rest of my life?
Haven't I made trouble enough for you already and for everybody
else who was unlucky enough to have anything to do with me?  I
can't get away from you now.  You and the doctors and nurses have
got me down and you're about five to one, so I can't fight my way
up--yet.  But when I do--well, I'm going somewhere, and it won't be
Wellmouth."

George gently forced him back to the pillow.

"There, there, Carey!" he said.  "Don't be foolish.  There is only
one place for you to go, only one I'll let you go--for a while
anyhow.  And that is where I can watch you.  And, as for being a
burden, that's nonsense.  I need you.  Yes, I do.  I need a new
bookkeeper.  I've got to find one right away.  You needn't laugh; I
mean it."

Carey was not laughing.  He was smiling, and was almost too weak to
do that.  The perspiration stood out on his forehead.

"George," he observed, feebly, "if I were you I wouldn't waste as
good a joke as that in a hospital.  I'd send it to one of the comic
papers.  Me--a bookkeeper!  I would be a wonderful bookkeeper,
wouldn't I?  Just about as good as I was a broker.  And your
customers would enjoy having me handle their accounts. . . .
There, there, old man, don't say it again, I know what you're doing
for me, and what you have done, and--and the Lord knows I
appreciate it.  I--oh, here comes that confounded nurse!  Keep her
away, will you?  She's as good a woman as ever lived, and she's
been mighty nice to me, so I don't want to kill her.  I haven't got
the strength to make a clean job of it, anyway.  Tell her to clear
out and let us alone.  Tell her!"

George did not tell the nurse to clear out, of course.  Instead he
went away himself.  But he came back often and each time he came he
renewed his persuasions and arguments.  He--Carey--was not fit to
go away among strangers, and, even if he went, wherever he went, he
would have to earn a living.  "And what could you do?" he asked.

Carey shook his head.  "I don't know," he admitted.  "But I know
what I can't do, and that is keep books."

"Yes, you can.  You can keep my books.  It isn't much of a job for
a fellow with your education, but--"

His brother waved a thin hand in protest.

"Suppose we forget my education, George," he said.  "I have
forgotten most of it, myself, and I would sell the rest cheap.  I
only wish I could pay my debts with it."

"But, hang it, Carey!  Talk sense.  You've got to do something the
rest of your life, haven't you?  What do you want to do?"

Another faint smile.  "Give it up," was the dubious reply.  "If you
hear of any one who raises chickens I might be of some use to him.
I could understand anything that wore feathers, perhaps.  And the
hens might like me; my brain and theirs ought to be about on a
level. . . .  No, George; stop talking about it.  It isn't any use.
And tell me now about the other thing.  Have you sold everything of
mine I told you to?  How much are the poor devils that trusted me
likely to get out of the wreck?"

It was that of which he wanted to talk always and insisted upon
hearing.  And it was along that line that his brother finally made
the approach which led to his consenting to return to Wellmouth.

One day, during the latter part of his stay in the hospital, he
first spoke of the idea as a possibility.

"George," he said, "I've been thinking this whole miserable
business over since you were here last."

The younger brother nodded.  "I know you have," he agreed.  "That
is the trouble.  You don't think of anything else.  It is that kind
of thinking that has kept you from getting on your feet before
now."

Carey's mild eyes showed an unwonted flash.  "Well?" he demanded.
"Are you surprised at that?  I don't believe you are.  I know you
pretty well.  Suppose you had muddled things as I have.  Suppose
your bungling and incompetence and general damn-foolishness had
lost your father's money, and your brother's and your friends' and
the Lord knows how much more.  Suppose you had seen yourself held
up as a nincompoop in the papers and made a standing joke for
everybody to laugh at--those who weren't too sore to laugh.  And
realizing all the time that you deserved a lot more than you were
getting.  You would think of it--say, once in a while, wouldn't
you?"

George had no honest answer to make.  "I wish I might have been
there when that partner of yours shot himself," he growled,
vindictively.  "I think I would have been willing to pay high for a
front seat at the show."

"No, you wouldn't.  Neither would I.  Osborne was made the way he
was and he paid high for his own show, such as it was.  I am a
whole lot more disgusted with myself than I am with him.  But say,
George; I want you to tell me this:  How much money do I owe--oh,
well, never mind, then!  How much money does that precious firm of
mine owe the folks in Wellmouth?  Never mind the other creditors
for the minute.  A good many of them were trying to get rich in a
hurry and they gambled.  It was a crooked deal they were up
against, but never mind them.  How much do I owe in Wellmouth?"

George lied a little; that is, he stretched the truth backwards as
far as he dared.

"Oh, not very much," he said.  "I guess thirty or forty thousand
would cover the whole of it down there."

"You're sure?  All that I owe the widows and orphans and crippled
sea captains and the rest?"

"Yes, I should say so."

"Humph!  And if I were to try and keep books for you--Lord! what a
crazy idea it is!--I shall be earning something, I suppose?  At
least you will be paying me something?"

"Of course.  I shall pay you what I paid Ed Nye.  Perhaps I might
pay you a little more."

"No, you won't.  And if it wasn't for my debts I should never let
you pay me that.  But--well, I've got to do something about those
debts, those Wellmouth debts.  See here, old man, if I did come
down there and worked and paid just a little to those--those poor
people I've swindled, do you think they might come to see I was
sorry and meant to be as honest as--as I could be, with my limited
intellect?"

George Judson leaned forward.  "Carey," he said, earnestly, "don't
let us have any mistake about this.  If you come back to Wellmouth
it is going to be hard--darned hard, for you at first.  You'll have
to expect to be slighted and--well, snubbed."

"Of course.  Why not?  I ought to be.  Go on."

"That at first.  But I honestly do believe if you come there and
work hard and--if you feel you want to, though there is no earthly,
legal reason why you should, for your firm's settlement will be as
straight and a lot more liberal than other bankrupt concerns I've
known of--if you want to try and pay a few dollars now and then on
your own hook, I honestly believe you will do more to square
yourself with Wellmouth and the Cape than you could ever do any
other way.  That's the truth; I mean it."

Carey Judson twisted the lock of hair above his nose; he was
sufficiently himself by this time to resume old habits.  Then he
sighed.  "Yes, I guess you do, George," he said.  "And I know you
want me to do it, heaven knows why.  And I know, too, that it is
going to be mighty hard for you. . . .  Well, I--I can't say
anything about how I feel towards you.  It's no use."

"You needn't.  You would do as much and more for me."

"Maybe.  Just now I haven't enough confidence in myself to believe
it.  But, as for your plan, George, I--well, maybe I'll say yes.
Maybe I'll come with you and see how it works."

"Good!  Good enough!"

"Bad enough, it is more likely to be.  But I guess I'll try it."

So, in the end, he came.  And now, his first week's labor ended, he
was walking, with his brother, to the latter's house--the house in
which he had spent his childhood and boyhood and the happy
vacations of his youth--to face again the frigid and contemptuous
countenances of his sister-in-law and the servants, and to meet his
aunt, Mrs. Susan Dain, from Cleveland, Ohio, who had not seen him
for at least four long years.



CHAPTER III


There were no cast-iron animals in the yard of the "Cap'n Jim-Carey
place," although the path from the front gate was flanked by a pair
of iron benches, of the scrolled and curlicued cemetery variety.
The path led straight to the front steps, the top step having a
scraper at either end.  Above that step was the formal front door,
its upper panels of ground glass ornamented with designs of fruit
and flowers.  These, however--and the door itself--were hidden by
closed green blinds, for the Judson front door, like all front
doors in Wellmouth at that period, was strictly for ornament and
almost never for use.  As a matter of fact, that particular door
had not been opened since the day of Captain Jim-Carey's funeral.

George and Carey Judson did not attempt entering the house by way
of the front door.  They would as soon have thought of entering by
the chimney.  Midway of the yard, the walk forked and they took the
branch to the left, that leading to the side door and side entry.
In this entry, on a walnut rack, they hung their straw hats and,
George leading the way, they went on into the sitting room.  The
sitting room was bright and cheery and livable and in it, in
rocking chairs each with a crocheted "tidy" on the back, sat Mrs.
Judson and Aunt Susan Dain, sewing.  No, Mrs. Dain was sewing; Cora
T. was making a splintwork photograph frame.  The ladies put down
their work and rose.  The brothers came forward to meet them.  Mrs.
Judson spoke first.

"Well," she observed, tartly, "you're here, aren't you.  I began to
think you wasn't coming at all.  What sort of state supper's in,
the land only knows.  It's been waiting for you half an hour."

Her husband hastened to apologize.

"I'm sorry, Cora," he said.  "I was all ready to shut up and come
home when Cap'n Higgins came in to see me, and you know how hard it
is to get rid of HIM.  Well, Aunt Susie, here's Carey.  You and he
haven't seen each other for a long time.  Looks about the same,
doesn't he?"

Aunt Susan Dain--she was a younger sister of Captain Jim-Carey--did
not answer for the moment.  She was a brisk little woman, with
sharp blue eyes and a snappy manner of moving and speaking.  She
looked her older nephew over from head to foot.

"No," she said, "he doesn't.  He's a lot thinner than he used to be
and he's as white as a Sunday handkerchief.  He always did look
like a picked Shanghai chicken, but now he looks as if he didn't
get enough to eat--or didn't want to eat it, one or the other. . . .
Well, Carey, why don't you say something?  Aren't you going to
kiss me?  Or have you forgotten how?  For the matter of that, you
never did know how very well.  George was different.  I guess
likely he had had more lessons."

George laughed.  Carey smiled and bent to peck at his relative's
cheek.  Cora T. watched the performance with impatient disapproval.

"Humph!" she sniffed.  "Lessons aren't necessary for some things,
with some people.  I guess likely that precious partner of his
could have given 'em to him, if what the papers have been printing
is true.  And you needn't worry about his not getting enough to
eat.  George looks out for that.  My soul, George Judson," she
added, turning to the latter, "what in the world did you send home
all that halibut for?  There's enough for a regiment.  What did you
think I was ever going to do with it?"

Her husband's brow puckered.  "Why, Cora," he protested, "you told
me you wanted a good piece of halibut for tomorrow's dinner.  That
was as fine a piece as we've had come in at the wharf this year.
And 'twas caught only yesterday."

"What of it?  If you'd caught a whale yesterday, I suppose you'd
have sent half of that home, wouldn't you? . . .  Oh, never mind,
never mind!  I suppose the hens will have what the rest of us
leave, as usual.  Well, if you're ready I am sure supper is--too
ready, and spoiled, probably."

At the supper table Aunt Susan was placed at George's right hand,
opposite and as far away from Carey as possible.  Mrs. Judson was
affectionately gracious to the old lady.  The latter was, in spite
of her loss of several thousand by the Osborne and Judson failure,
still in possession of a good deal of money and her two nephews
were her only relatives.  The covered dish of baked beans and the
heaped plate of brown bread were deposited in front of George by
the new servant.  The latter was an importation from Boston, and
about her, and everything she did, was a haughty air of conscious
superiority.  She bore the dishes in from the kitchen with uptilted
nose, as if the odor of such plebeian rations disgusted her, and
her attitude, as she stood behind her master's chair, awaiting
their apportionment, was that of self-contempt at finding herself
in such a humiliating position.  Mrs. Judson had secured her
through the influence of the Loveland cook, also a Bostonian of
Hibernian extraction, and Cora T. proudly told her husband that she
had worked for some awfully rich families.  Why she no longer
worked for those families, but consented to take a situation in the
country, was something of a mystery.  Mrs. Judson's own cook--her
name was Hepsibah Ellis; she had been Cap'n Jim-Carey's housekeeper
and there was nothing of the Bostonian about HER--confided to
personal friends that the newcomer thought herself "some punkins"
and was always talking about the big bugs she had been used to
waiting on, but she--Hepsibah--had already found out it was a good
plan to keep the cooking sherry locked up.  The new servant's name
was Maggie.

George Judson bent his head and pattered through a hasty blessing.
Then he proceeded to his business of serving the baked beans.
Maggie slid each plate before its recipient with a contemptuous
flourish, thrust the platter of brown bread under each nose, and
then distributed the teacups as Mrs. Judson filled them.

"That will do, Maggie," said Cora T., grandly.  "You can go now."

Maggie departed, her skirts swishing disdain as they brushed the
doorway.  There was a general relaxing of tension following her
exit, particularly noticeable on George's part.  He began to talk
to Mrs. Dain, as did his wife.  Aunt Susan talked to both of them
and, occasionally, to Carey, who said very little.  George asked
questions concerning matters in Cleveland; Mr. Dain had been an
Ohio man, and his widow's home was in that city.  Cora T. talked of
society happenings in Wellmouth, dwelling largely upon the new
piazza which the Halls were adding to their home.

"Piazzas are getting to be quite the thing," she observed.  "People
sit outdoors in the summer time so much more than they used to.  I
think it is real nice in warm weather.  I have ordered a hammock
myself.  Tobias Higgins is going to make it for me.  He makes
lovely hammocks out of cod line.  The Lovelands have got one.  It
is made just like a fish net.  They have it hung out in the front
yard between the syringa bush and the lilacs."

Her husband laughed.  "That was Nellie's idea, I shouldn't wonder,"
he observed.  "Nellie is the Loveland daughter, Aunt Susie; maybe
you remember her.  She's been trying to land a fish for the last
three or four years, but up to now they have managed to get away.
The other evening, when I was going down to lodge meeting, I
noticed she had young Bennie Hall hung up in that hammock.  Maybe
HE won't be able to wiggle out, you can't tell."

Mrs. Judson regarded him with disapproval.

"Don't talk nonsense, George," she ordered.  "Bennie Hall is only a
boy.  He isn't through Tech yet.  And Nellie is--well, she is older
than he is."

George chuckled.  "That statement isn't what you'd call an
exaggeration," he declared.  "But maybe she's old enough not to be
too particular.  The younger you catch 'em the tenderer they are,
you know.  Ho, ho!  That's so, isn't it.  Carey?"

Carey looked up from his plate.  "What, George?" he asked.  "I
didn't hear you.  I was thinking of something else, I guess."

"As usual," commented Mrs. Judson.  "George--"

But her husband was still chuckling.

"There was a time here, half a dozen years ago, Aunt Susan," he
explained, "when we didn't know but Nellie would have Carey hooked.
He is older than she is, of course, but he was pretty tender in
those days.  He--"

"George!" snapped Cora T.  "Be still and pay attention to your
business.  Pass Aunt Susan the brown bread, why don't you?"

Mrs. Dain accepted a second slice of the bread.  She regarded her
older nephew through her spectacles.

"Humph!" she sniffed.  "I didn't know that Carey was ever
interested in any girl--except one perhaps.  What has become of
that Emily Sayles?  I always liked her."

"Who?  Emily?  Oh, she and her mother are in Hartford, I guess.
They live there winters.  Lawyer Simeon Sayles--Emily's father; of
course you knew him, Aunt Susan--owned that old white house on the
Trumet road.  Desire and Emily used to come there summers, but for
three years they've been away, down in Maine, I believe, and this
summer--well, I don't know what they'll do this summer.  There is
some talk of the Sayles place being put up and sold. . . .
Probably that is just talk, though," he added, hastily.

His wife looked wise.  "I shouldn't wonder if it was a lot more
than talk," she announced.  "Sarah Loveland told me that she had
had a letter from a cousin of hers--a very nice person who visits
her once in a while, SO pleasant and refined, and worth a GREAT
deal of money.  I know her VERY well. . . .  This person said in
the letter that she met Emily in New York and that Emily told her
she and her mother were considering selling the old place.  Emily
said they hated to think of doing it, but they might have to."

Aunt Susan seemed surprised.  "Have to?" she repeated.  "Why should
they have to if they don't want to, for mercy sakes?"

Cora T.'s air of wisdom became more profound.

"I don't know," she said.  "Of course I don't KNOW--but I might
guess.  Maybe it's because they need the money."

"Need money!  Why should they need money?  They've got money,
haven't they?  In my day here Simeon Sayles used to be called
rich."

George put in a word.  He appeared uneasy.

"Oh, I guess he never was anything like as well-off as people
thought he was," he explained.

"Well, he had considerable, I know.  And there was nobody to leave
it to but his wife and daughter.  They have always lived pretty
well since his death, too.  When I saw them the last time I was
East here they certainly didn't look poverty stricken.  What have
they done with their money?"

George fingered the handle of the serving spoon.  He tried to
change the subject.

"I--I don't know, I'm sure," he stammered.  "Er--can't I help you
to a few more beans, Aunt Susan?"

"No, of course you can't.  You gave me enough for a day laborer in
the beginning.  And I have eaten them, too.  I ought to have more
sense, at my age.  But what makes you act so queer?  What have the
Sayleses done with their money?  I believe you do know.  At any
rate, Cora does.  What is all this mysterious stuff, George
Judson?"

George did not answer, nor did his wife, although she seemed about
to do so.  It was Carey who spoke.

"Everybody knows, Aunt Susie," he said, quietly.  "They invested a
good deal of it through me and my late partner.  It isn't much of a
mystery."

Aunt Susan said "Oh," and that was all.  George said nothing, but
he frowned.  Cora T. smiled slightly and begged her visitor to have
another cup of tea.

There was a good deal of talk during the rest of the meal, but it
was very general and a trifle forced.  Aunt Susan chatted of this
and that, but she carefully refrained from addressing her older
nephew, although she glanced at him shrewdly from time to time.
After supper was over they went back to the sitting room.  A few
minutes later Carey announced that, if they did not mind, he would
excuse himself and go to his own room.

"I am going to bed early," he explained.  "I am rather tired, for
some reason."

Mrs. Dain's bright little eyes looked him straight in the face.

"Working pretty hard, are you, Carey?" she asked.

"Oh, not too hard."

"A little harder than you've been used to, maybe."

"Perhaps. . . .  But--"

"But what?  You mean you wouldn't have to kill yourself to do
that?"

Carey smiled.  "You're a pretty good mind reader, Aunt Susie," he
said.

"Humph!  It never was much of a trick to read YOUR mind, young man.
It always was pretty large print.  Well, I shall see you in the
morning, I suppose."

"Eh?  Oh, surely!  Yes, indeed."

"All right, I want to.  Good night."

After he had gone upstairs she turned to George.

"Takes it pretty hard, doesn't he, George?" she inquired.

George nodded, gloomily.  "Mighty hard," he said.

"Humph!  Yes, he would.  Well, that won't hurt him any.  May do him
good.  And he deserves it."

Cora T. dropped the splintwork frame in her lap.  "There!" she
exclaimed, with great satisfaction.  "If it isn't a comfort to hear
you say that, Aunt Susan!  It is exactly what _I_ say, and what I
tell George.  He does deserve it.  When I think of all the poor
people in this town, and so many other places, who have lost their
money through him, I--oh, I lose all patience!"

Aunt Susan threaded her needle.  "Then I wouldn't think of them,"
she said.  "It doesn't do them any good, and most of us need what
spare patience we've got."

"But SOMEBODY ought to think of them."

"Well, somebody does," with a jerk of her head toward the stairs.
"I imagine HE does, for one. . . .  George, read me some of the
town news in the Item.  It has been a long time since I was here
and I want to know who is having his barn shingled.  You can skip
the death notices; I have reached the age where they are altogether
too much like a time-table."

Upstairs, in the bedroom over the sitting room, Carey Judson, too,
was reading, or trying to do so.  He was sprawled in the Salem
rocker, by the table with the lamp upon it, and the book in his
hand was one he had taken from the shelf on the wall at the head of
the bed.  It was one of his own books, one he had bought with money
which Aunt Susan had sent him on his fifteenth birthday, a juvenile
yarn of hunting and adventure.  All the books on that shelf were
similar--boy's stories which he had owned and loved when a boy.
For that room had been his ever since he was old enough to have a
room of his own and, for a wonder, it had been allowed to remain
pretty much as it was, untouched by his sister-in-law's improving
and modernizing hand.  Cora T. had not yet, as she said, got around
to "doing over" that room, although some of these days, she
prophesied, she was going in there to "pitch out" most of the
dreadful rubbish it contained.  The wall paper was the same which
Captain Jim-Carey and his wife had selected when the house was
built.  The furniture was old-fashioned painted pine and maple, not
new black walnut.  The "rubbish" was Carey's own accumulating, a
moth-eaten stuffed squirrel on a stick; a moulting stuffed gull
hung from the ceiling by a wire; a pair of stuffed quail in a
homemade and lopsided glass case; the cabinet--also homemade--
containing his collection of birds' eggs; the long muzzle-loading
shotgun Judson, Senior, had once owned and later presented to his
oldest son in defiance of family and neighborly protest.  To Carey
that room was home and it was the one spot connected with home for
which he felt the old affection.  In that room, at times since his
return, he could still experience a sense of "belonging" and a
measure of forgetfulness.

Not this evening, however.  The story he tried to read was too
youthful and impossible to hold his attention, and he laid it down.
He walked to the window and stood, looking out over the town, its
lighted windows agleam.  Every house, every back yard in sight, was
familiar to him.  He had been in each house, had played in each
yard.  At the beginning of how many happy vacations had he eagerly
hurried from school or college to the train which would bring him
back to Wellmouth!  Acquaintances and friends had often urged him
to spend a part of those vacations with them elsewhere, but he only
infrequently accepted the invitations.  But once--when he went on
the three months' trip to Labrador with Professor Knight, the head
of the Ornithological Department of the Museum of Natural History
in a middle-western city--had he missed spending at least a part of
a summer in Wellmouth.  The Professor used to visit a sister in the
town--she was dead now--and he had taken a fancy to the young
fellow who knew and loved and understood birds so well.  Carey had
had a glorious time on that excursion.  He had not seen the
Professor since, although for a time they corresponded.  As he
stood there at the window he found himself wondering what the old
chap was doing.  Still puttering with his specimens and chasing
here, there and everywhere after others, probably.  It must be a
glorious life and fortunate the man who could live it, whose
parents--even if they believed him to be an idiot--had permitted
him to go his own idiotic way, be the consequences what they might.
At least they could never be as disastrous as those which had
followed upon Captain Jim-Carey's stubbornness in driving him into
business and his own careless, weak-spirited yielding.  He might
have--probably would have--failed at anything he tried, but at
least those people down there behind those lighted window shades
would then have been able to speak of him only as an honest and
foolish failure, not as a crook.  Why--oh, why--had Aunt Susan Dain
dragged Emily Sayles' name into the supper table conversation!

He swung away from the window, picked up the book once more, and
read a few lines, then gave it up and did what he had told his aunt
he intended doing--went to bed.

He rose early the next morning and came down to the sitting room.
The George Judson family followed the ancient New England custom of
lying late on Sunday morning and the Sabbath breakfast was usually
served about nine-thirty.  Carey had arranged with Hepsibah to eat
alone in the kitchen and go out for a walk before his brother and
Aunt Susan and Cora T. made their appearance.  Hepsibah had been
"hired help" in that house ever since he could remember and he and
she had been co-conspirators on many Sunday mornings in the past.
Since the failure and his return in disgrace her attitude toward
him had been a peculiar combination of impatience and indulgence.
On the evening of his arrival she had greeted him with a sniff and
a perfunctory handshake; but later on, when, following a boyhood
custom, he went out to the kitchen for a drink from the pump, she
had appeared at his elbow with a handful of molasses cookies and
the announcement that there was a piece of apple pie in the pantry
if he felt like eating it.

"I saved it for you," she said.  "It's awful stuff to eat just
afore you go to bed, pie is, but you've ate enough of it in your
time and it ain't killed you yet, so maybe you'll take the risk.
Only don't blame me if you suffer afterwards."

He accepted the pie, not because he wanted it but because he knew
his doing so would please her, and while he was eating it she sat
in the kitchen rocker knitting and regarding him steadily.  Maggie,
the new maid, was out and they were alone.

"Well," she observed, after an interval of silence, "you've come
back to Wellmouth to stay put this time, eh?"

He nodded.  "It looks so," he said.

"Um-hum.  Well, you might come to a worse place.  I don't cal'late
you feel that way just now, though.  Goin' to keep George's books
for him, so I hear."

"I'm going to try."

"Huh?  I guess likely 'twill BE a trial--for you, I mean.  What do
you know about keepin' books?"

"Nothing."

"Well, that's some satisfaction, maybe.  When a body knows they
don't know anything they're generally in better shape to learn.
You're goin' to work for a good man.  Did you know that?"

The nod this time was emphatic.  "No one knows it better," he said.

"Yes, George Judson's a good man.  He's got a lot of your father's
generousness and common sense and there's enough of your mother in
him to keep the sense from runnin' to pig-headedness.  You don't
remember your mother very well, of course.  She was a fine woman.
I thought a sight of her."

Carey was busy with the pie and made no comment.  Mrs. Ellis went
on.

"Maybe if she had lived," she said, "she might have made Cap'n Jim
see that settin' you up in that bankin' business was a fool notion.
Might as well turn a canary bird loose in a room full of cats.
Anybody that knew you would know that Boston gang would have you
clawed to pieces and swallowed in less 'n no time.  _I_ wasn't
surprised when it happened.  Only surprisin' thing was that it took
so long. . . .  Well?  Have you had enough to satisfy you till
mornin'?  There's plenty more cookies.  I wouldn't let you eat any
more pie if I had it to give you."

Carey rose.  "I have had quite enough, thanks, Hepsy," he said.
"It was as good as it always used to be."

"Huh!  Why shouldn't it be?  I guess I know how to cook well enough
to satisfy the average man, even if I never hired out to Boston big
bugs.  You always had a sweet tooth.  Well, come out here any time
when you get the cravin'.  What you get in there," with a movement
of her thumb in the direction of the dining room, "may have
consider'ble pepper along with the sugar. . . .  My soul!" with
apparent irrelevance, "it is astonishin' how sensible a man can be
in most things and what a dummy he's liable to be when it comes to
pickin' a woman to live with all his life. . . .  Well, good
night."

"Good night, Hepsy.  Thanks again for the cookies."

"That's all right.  They'll always be here when you want 'em.
Don't pay any attention to that Maggie one; you come right to me."

She was awaiting him in the kitchen when he entered it this Sunday
morning, and his breakfast was ready.  He sat down at the table
there and she stood by and watched him.

"Goin' off by yourself, same as you used to, I suppose probable?"
she asked.

"Yes.  I thought I might take a walk along the beach."

"Um-hum.  I'd have guessed that if you hadn't told me.  Comin' back
in time to go to meetin' with the rest of 'em?"

"I doubt it."

"So do I.  Well, I suppose you know what she'll say.  She's a great
go-to-meetin' hand."

"She," of course, meant Mrs. George Judson.  Hepsibah usually
referred to her as "she."  Carey smiled dubiously.

"I know," he admitted.  "But--well, honestly, Hepsy, I haven't got
the--call it courage, if you want to--to go to church here yet.
Everybody knows me and--and--"

"And you cal'late they'll be payin' more attention to you than to
Mr. Thomas' sermon.  I shouldn't wonder if you was right.  But
you'll have to go sometime, won't you?"

"I suppose so.  But I can't make up my mind to do it to-day."

"Well, then, don't.  Go when you get good and ready and not before.
Only WHEN you get ready--go, even if you have to go alone.  Say,
Carey, I don't know as my advice amounts to much, but, such as it
is, I'll hand it you free gratis for nothin'.  You do what you feel
is right to do and don't let anybody else talk you into doin' the
other thing.  You've done that other thing too often; that's part
of what's the matter with you. . . .  Eh?  Good land, who's this
comin'!  I didn't suppose there was anybody up but you in that end
of the house yet awhile.  Who's sick, I wonder?"

No one was sick, but Aunt Susan Dain was up and dressed, and
apparently very wide awake.  She opened the door from the dining
room and looked in.

"Good morning," she said, briskly.  "Carey, when you've finished
breakfast I wish you would come into the sitting room a minute.
I want to see you before the others come down."

The door closed again.  Carey twisted his forelock.

"How on earth did she know I was out here?" he asked.

Hepsibah sniffed.  "She's known you and your tricks about as long
as I have," she declared.  "She's a smart woman, always was, way
back afore she was married.  And she comes of smart able people.
HER father never peddled clams for a livin'--or, if he did, his
customers never found 'twas safer to smell of 'em afore they paid
the bill."

When Carey entered the sitting room Mrs. Dain, who was sitting by
the window, looked up from the Item she was reading and motioned to
him to take the chair next hers.

"Sit down, Carey," she ordered.  "I've been wanting to talk with
you alone and I guess this is as good a chance as any we're likely
to have."

Carey obediently took the chair.  It was Cora T.'s pet rocker and
his occupying it was close to sacrilege.

"All right, Aunt Susan," he said.  "Here I am.  Talk."

"I'm going to.  I'm going to talk about you.  That's what I got up
so early for.  It probably won't be much of a novelty for you--
being talked about.  I should imagine you must be used to it by
this time."

Her nephew nodded gravely.  "I am," he admitted; and then added,
"measurably."

"Humph!  Well, you didn't expect not to be talked about, it isn't
likely?"

"No."

"And you deserve to be.  You know that, too, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Um-hum.  Perhaps it's been mentioned to you before.  And will be
again.  Well, that is what you must expect.  People who dance have
to pay the fiddler. . . .  Now what are you twisting your front
hair for?  What were you going to say?"

Carey's slim fingers paused in the twisting.  He smiled.

"I wasn't going to say anything," he answered.

"Probably not.  But you were thinking."

"Why, yes, I was.  I was thinking that some people don't seem to be
able to do either."

"Humph!  And what does that mean?  Either what?"

"Either dance or pay."

"I see.  You never did dance much, that's a fact.  It might have
been better for you if you had.  Then you would have been where you
could watch the others.  That partner of yours danced considerable,
didn't he?"

There was no answer.  Carey's hand moved upward again toward his
forehead.  Mrs. Dain's sharp command halted its progress.

"Let your hair alone," she snapped.  "It will go fast enough
without your pulling it out by the roots.  Carey, I am all out of
patience with you.  What in the world did you ever get into this
mess for?"

He shook his head.  "Why does a hen cross the road?" he asked.

"Oh, my soul and body!  CAN'T you talk like a sensible person?  No,
I suppose you can't; anyway you never have since you were old
enough to talk.  Well, I always heard a hen crossed the road
because she couldn't go around it.  But she looks where she's
going, at least.  Why didn't you look and see where that business
of yours was going?  It must have been plain enough."

He stirred and started to rise from the chair.  She caught his arm.

"You sit right down," she ordered.  "I haven't said a word of what
I wanted to say yet.  We'll leave what has happened to take care of
itself.  Talking won't help it, now that it is done, and it was
your father's fault more than yours.  I SHOULD like to talk to HIM;
but he has gone where I can't get at him. . . .  Carey, what did
you ever let George tease you into coming back here for?  To keep
books, of all things!  You--keep books!  You couldn't keep a--a
fish line and keep it straight. . . .  NOW what were you going to
say?"

"I was going to agree with you, that is all."

"Oh, dear me!  If you would only stop agreeing with folks and say
no once in a while, for a change!  If you had said no to your
father--  But there! we were going to forget that.  You came here
because George wanted you to, of course.  That is part of what I
wanted to talk to you about.  You've picked out about the hardest
thing you could possibly do.  You're going to have a dreadful hard
time of it.  Working in that office, walking the streets of this
town where everybody knows you, facing the very folks whose money
has gone to pot on your account, living in this house with--well,
with those you've got to live with.  It is too much.  Whether you
deserve it or not it is altogether too much.  See here, Carey,
suppose I could find something for you to do out in Cleveland, some
sort of work--the land knows what it would be--anything you could
do, I mean--would you do it?  Would you give up this foolishness--
and come out and try it?"

He shook his head.  "No, Aunt Susan," he said.

"Humph! . . .  Well, you said no prompt enough that time, I'll have
to admit.  Why won't you, for mercy's sake?  Do you LIKE to be
here?"

"No."

"Of course you don't.  That was a silly question, and I shouldn't
have asked it.  Then why not come?"

"Because--well, because I have made up my mind to stay here.  Thank
you just as much, though."

"Never mind the thanks.  And don't make the mistake of thinking
that I have forgiven you for making such a spectacle of yourself,
because I haven't.  You deserve to be punished and you're bound to
be--only--well, I believe there is a law against cruel and unusual
punishments and I suppose I've got some of the family soft-
heartedness--or soft-headedness, whichever you want to call it.  If
you've made up your mind to be a martyr--and you say you have--I
can't stop you.  But I want to tell you this, young man: martyrdom
is a beautiful thing for other folks to read about, but I sometimes
doubt if the martyr himself appreciated the beauty of it while it
was going on.  And it generally takes the rest of the world at
least a hundred years to realize it was a martyrdom and not just
burning rubbish.  If you act as brave and long-suffering as--as any
Saint What's-his-name that ever was boiled in oil, you won't be
praised for it down here in Wellmouth.  I hope you realize that."

"I do."

"But you're going to stay just the same?"

"I am going to try to stay."

"All right.  I guess there's some of your father's stubbornness in
you, after all.  And, it is like his, too--showing up in the wrong
place.  I shall be interested to see how it works out.  You're
going to hoe your row, and you'll have to hoe it alone.  I've
offered you a chance--mercy knows why, for you don't deserve one,
that's sure--and you won't take it.  But that's all I can do for
you.  You mustn't expect any help from me--money help, or any other
kind.  You have had money of mine--you and your partner--and it has
gone where the woodbine twineth."

Carey's hand, which had again strayed toward his forehead, moved
impulsively in her direction.

"I'm awfully sorry, Aunt Susan," he said, sadly.  "That is one of
the things I am most sorry about."

"You needn't be.  I can afford to see it go better than a whole lot
of others can.  Only," with a sarcastic reference to some of the
newspaper stories concerning the late Osborne's extravagance, "if
I'd known it was buying orchids for other women I SHOULD have liked
the privilege of picking the women.  What I want to say, Carey, is
just this.  You mustn't expect any more money from me--while I'm
alive or after I'm dead.  That is plain enough, isn't it?"

Carey untangled his long legs and stood up.

"Perfectly plain, Aunt Susan," he said, quietly; "and common sense
besides.  If I had any fault to find with it, it would be that it
was a little superfluous.  I haven't expected any money from you.
I have never thought of such a thing."

She regarded him shrewdly.  "Haven't you?" she observed.  "Well,
perhaps, being you, you haven't.  But I shouldn't be paralyzed with
surprise if there were some folks who had--and do.  However, I
guess probably you haven't.  You never were enough interested in
money to think about it much.  AND--which does make a difference--
you've always had all of it you wanted.  Well, you won't have it
from now on, which may be a good thing for you. . . .  What?  Don't
mutter; say it out loud."

He was looking at her with a peculiar expression.  Now he smiled.

"I am thinking about it," he said.  "In fact, I expect to think
about it for--well, for the rest of my life, perhaps."

She straightened in her chair.  "Now what do you mean by that, I
wonder?" she demanded.  "You mean something.  When you get that
queer look in your eye it means there is something up your sleeve.
I've seen you look that way too many times not to know.  Humph!
And you won't tell me what it is, of course?  No, you never would.
Oh, Carey Judson, you ARE a provoking good for nothing!  Did you
know it?"

His smile broadened.  "It seems to me I have heard something of the
sort," he said.  Then the smile faded, and he added seriously and
more briskly than was his usual habit of speech, "But I don't mean
to provoke you, Aunt Susan.  You have always been mighty good to
me."

"Stuff and nonsense!  And never mind whether I have or not.  I'm
not going to be good to you any more.  I'm through with you and you
must understand it. . . .  Now where are you going?  Down to the
shore to moon up and down the sandhills, I'll bet!  Why don't you
stay at home and go to church like a respectable person?"

"Now, Aunt Susan!"

"STOP looking at me that way!  I suppose you mean you aren't a
respectable person.  Well, you aren't.  Clear out!  Go away!
You'll spoil my appetite for breakfast.  But don't you forget what
I've said.  You mustn't expect me to help you any more, alive or
dead.  I've taken you out of my will, Carey.  I'm sorry, but my
conscience wouldn't let me do anything else.  If I left money to
you I should crawl out of my grave every night and sit on the
tombstone wondering who had got it away from you.  You're better
off poor, and that's what you will always be, as far as I am
concerned.  Poor folks have to work, and hard work is a change that
may do you good.  I did think that I might take you somewhere where
the hardness wouldn't be quite as hard in one way, but if you had
rather stay here--why, that is your own lookout. . . .  There!
I've said my say.  Now you can go beachcombing, if you want to."



CHAPTER IV


The day was clear and sunshiny.  There was a light breeze blowing
from the southwest, a breeze which, although bringing with it more
than a hint of the coming summer, had still in it a tang of
coolness invigorating and salty.  Carey's thin nose sniffed it with
zest and his stride quickened as he moved down the road leading
from Lookout Hill toward the shore.  The road was deserted.  Smoke
arose from kitchen chimneys of the houses he passed, indicating
that breakfasts were in process of preparation, but the shades in
the front portions of those houses were still drawn tightly to the
sills.  Over the dozing village hung the stillness of Sunday
morning, a stillness which belonged to it and was a part of every
Sunday he could remember.

He walked along the main road for a short distance, then, turning
to the right, swung over the cedar rail fence bordering the field
beyond the Methodist church and took the path "across lots" which
led directly to the beach.  The path climbed a little hill and,
winding through a thicket of cedar and white birch, continued along
the top of the dyke separating Eben Crosby's cranberry swamp from
Cahoon's pond, the little sheet of water where, as a boy, he had
navigated the first rowboat he ever owned.  The water of the pond
was blue and upon its slightly rumpled surface floated a party of
his friends, the gulls, enjoying the luxury of a fresh water bath.
Beyond the dyke the path entered a grove of pines and, emerging
from these, came out at the top of the first of the row of sand
dunes bordering the bay.

From this dune the view was, except for its foreground, exclusively
wet.  Right and left the beach stretched in low white lines, backed
by yellow sand hills.  To the right it ended at West End, with its
lighthouse: to the left at East End, marked by a barrel on a pole.
Within those arms was Wellmouth Bay, and, beyond and between, a
glimpse of open sea.  The bay, ruffled by the wind, was an expanse
of blue, or light and dark green, broken only by the fish weirs,
their spidery poles and nets rising here and there as if traced
with a pen dipped in brown ink.  The air came cool and fresh from
the water, the light surf creamed and frothed along the strand, and
above its tumbled lines more gulls, large and small, swooped and
soared and dived.  Flocks of sandpipers scurried along the beach,
just above the ripples' edge.

At Carey's left, a half mile away, the village began abruptly with
a row of fish and clam shanties and, beyond these, the wharf of
J. C. Judson & Co., the schooner moored at its outer end, and other
bay craft anchored here and there.  There were, at this period, but
few dwellings in sight.  Most Wellmouth householders either were
spending or had spent the larger part of their lives upon salt
water and, when at home, preferred to look out upon the roads and
streets of their native town rather than upon the element which
was, or had been, their workshop.  There was one notable exception.
Halfway between the wharf and the spot where the path followed by
Carey Judson emerged from the pines stood a square house of medium
size, with the railed platform called a "whale walk" in the center
of its roof.  Before it, at the water's edge, was a long boathouse
and behind it a barn and cluster of sheds and outbuildings.  House
and boathouse and sheds were painted a gleaming, spotless white.
The window blinds were a vivid green.  The little front yard was
surrounded by a picket fence, whitewashed until it glistened, and
in the yard was a flagpole flying the stars and stripes and, below
the latter, a banner exhibiting a spouting whale in red and the
letter "H" in bright blue.

Every one in Wellmouth--yes, and practically every adult citizen of
Trumet and Bayport--knew that house and that banner.  They knew the
story connected with them and enjoyed telling it to casual
strangers or summer visitors.  Captain Tobias Higgins had been a
Wellmouth boy.  Like many Wellmouth lads of his generation he left
school and went to sea as cabin boy when just entering his 'teens,
but, unlike the majority, his first voyage was made aboard a New
Bedford whaler.  And, from that time until his late forties Tobias
spent the greater part of his life in the Arctic or Antarctic
oceans hunting the sperm whale or the right whale or the finback.
He had risen to command of a whale ship by the time he was twenty-
one and when thirty owned a share in that vessel.  He married
Phoebe Baker--she was a Wellmouth girl--and she accompanied him on
the long voyages of two, and sometimes three years.  His ship, the
Ambergris, soon acquired the reputation of being a "lucky" craft
and he of being a lucky skipper.  People said he was making money
and saving money, but, in spite of this, they were greatly
surprised when, at the age of forty-seven, he and his wife returned
to their native town to announce that they were through with
seafaring forever.

"Yes, sir-ee!" declared Captain Tobias, "we're through, me and
Phoebe are.  We've spent years enough keepin' company with polar
bears and walruses and Huskies and critters like that.  We're goin'
to drop anchor and lay up amongst Christians for the rest of our
days. . . .  Eh?  What's that?  No, I won't say I've made all the
money I want.  I don't believe anybody ever did that, John Jacob
Astor nor anybody else, but I've made enough to pay for my three
meals and lodgin' ashore and ashore's where I'm goin' to stay from
now on.  I've harpooned whales and cut up whales and tried out
blubber, till, by thunder, now that I've got to where they have hot
weather once in a while, I don't expect to sweat nothin' but pure
ile.  Where I'VE been there wan't no chance to sweat.  Cold!  Why,
the only baby we ever had come to port was born one winter when the
old Ambergris was froze in up in Hudson's Bay, and when the child
died all hands had to turn to and chisel a hole in an iceberg so's
it could be buried decent.  Yes, sir, my wife and I have had enough
of that.  We're through.  You can rate me from now on as A. B. L.
L.--able-bodied land lubber.  I never cal'late to be where I can
see salt water again--no, nor even smell it."

By way of proving the truth of this declaration, he bought land,
not on the main road, but on the hill fronting the bay and erected
thereon the square white house with the whale walk on the roof.
Within a year he had built the boathouse at the shore, and now,
moored in front of it, was his catboat, the Ambergris Junior.  In
that boat, or gunning or fishing up and down the beach, he spent
most of his spare time in the summer months.  During the winter--
when "iced up," as he called it--he puttered about the house,
driving his wife nearly frantic, or loafed about the store and post
office, squabbling over local, state, and national politics and
invariably espousing the unpopular cause because it happened to be
unpopular.  Town meetings had livened up tremendously since Ca