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Title:      Jennie Gerhardt (1911)
Author:     Theodore Dreiser
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0300701.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted:          April 2003
Date most recently updated: April 2003

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Jennie Gerhardt (1911)
Author:     Theodore Dreiser





CHAPTER I


One morning, in the fall of 1880, a middle-aged woman, accompanied
by a young girl of eighteen, presented herself at the clerk's desk
of the principal hotel in Columbus, Ohio, and made inquiry as to
whether there was anything about the place that she could do.  She
was of a helpless, fleshy build, with a frank, open countenance and
an innocent, diffident manner.  Her eyes were large and patient,
and in them dwelt such a shadow of distress as only those who have
looked sympathetically into the countenances of the distraught and
helpless poor know anything about.  Any one could see where the
daughter behind her got the timidity and shamefacedness which now
caused her to stand back and look indifferently away.  She was a
product of the fancy, the feeling, the innate affection of the
untutored but poetic mind of her mother combined with the gravity
and poise which were characteristic of her father.  Poverty was
driving them.  Together they presented so appealing a picture of
honest necessity that even the clerk was affected.

"What is it you would like to do?" he said.

"Maybe you have some cleaning or scrubbing," she replied, timidly.
"I could wash the floors."

The daughter, hearing the statement, turned uneasily, not because
it irritated her to work, but because she hated people to guess at
the poverty that made it necessary.  The clerk, manlike, was
affected by the evidence of beauty in distress.  The innocent
helplessness of the daughter made their lot seem hard indeed.

"Wait a moment," he said; and, stepping into a back office, he
called the head housekeeper.

There was work to be done.  The main staircase and parlour hall
were unswept because of the absence of the regular scrub-woman.

"Is that her daughter with her?" asked the housekeeper, who could
see them from where she was standing.

"Yes, I believe so."

"She might come this afternoon if she wants to.  The girl helps
her, I suppose?"

"You go see the housekeeper," said the clerk, pleasantly, as he
came back to the desk.  "Right through there"--pointing to a near-
by door.  "She'll arrange with you about it."

A succession of misfortunes, of which this little scene might have
been called the tragic culmination, had taken place in the life and
family of William Gerhardt, a glass-blower by trade.  Having
suffered the reverses so common in the lower walks of life, this
man was forced to see his wife, his six children, and himself
dependent for the necessaries of life upon whatever windfall of
fortune the morning of each recurring day might bring.  He himself
was sick in bed.  His oldest boy, Sebastian, or "Bass," as his
associates transformed it, worked as an apprentice to a local
freight-car builder, but received only four dollars a week.
Genevieve, the oldest of the girls, was past eighteen, but had not
as yet been trained to any special work.  The other children,
George, aged fourteen; Martha, twelve; William, ten, and Veronica,
eight, were too young to do anything, and only made the problem of
existence the more complicated.  Their one mainstay was the home,
which, barring a six-hundred-dollar mortgage, the father owned.  He
had borrowed this money at a time when, having saved enough to buy
the house, he desired to add three rooms and a porch, and so make
it large enough for them to live in.  A few years were still to run
on the mortgage, but times had been so bad that he had been forced
to use up not only the little he had saved to pay off the
principal, but the annual interest also.  Gerhardt was helpless,
and the consciousness of his precarious situation--the doctor's
bill, the interest due upon the mortgage, together with the sums
owed butcher and baker, who, through knowing him to be absolutely
honest, had trusted him until they could trust no longer--all these
perplexities weighed upon his mind and racked him so nervously as
to delay his recovery.

Mrs. Gerhardt was no weakling.  For a time she took in washing,
what little she could get, devoting the intermediate hours to
dressing the children, cooking, seeing that they got off to school,
mending their clothes, waiting on her husband, and occasionally
weeping.  Not infrequently she went personally to some new grocer,
each time farther and farther away, and, starting an account with a
little cash, would receive credit until other grocers warned the
philanthropist of his folly.  Corn was cheap.  Sometimes she would
make a kettle of lye hominy, and this would last, with scarcely
anything else, for an entire week.  Corn-meal also, when made into
mush, was better than nothing, and this, with a little milk, made
almost a feast.  Potatoes fried was the nearest they ever came to
luxurious food, and coffee was an infrequent treat.  Coal was got
by picking it up in buckets and baskets along the maze of tracks
in the near-by railroad yard.  Wood, by similar journeys to
surrounding lumber-yards.  Thus they lived from day to day, each
hour hoping that the father would get well and that the glass-works
would soon start up.  But as the winter approached Gerhardt began
to feel desperate.

"I must get out of this now pretty soon," was the sturdy German's
regular comment, and his anxiety found but weak expression in the
modest quality of his voice.

To add to all this trouble little Veronica took the measles, and,
for a few days, it was thought that she would die.  The mother
neglected everything else to hover over her and pray for the best.
Doctor Ellwanger came every day, out of purely human sympathy, and
gravely examined the child.  The Lutheran minister, Pastor Wundt,
called to offer the consolation of the Church.  Both of these men
brought an atmosphere of grim ecclesiasticism into the house.  They
were the black-garbed, sanctimonious emissaries of superior forces.
Mrs. Gerhardt felt as if she were going to lose her child, and
watched sorrowfully by the cot-side.  After three days the worst
was over, but there was no bread in the house.  Sebastian's wages
had been spent for medicine.  Only coal was free for the picking,
and several times the children had been scared from the railroad
yards.  Mrs. Gerhardt thought of all the places to which she might
apply, and despairingly hit upon the hotel.  Now, by a miracle, she
had her chance.

"How much do you charge?" the housekeeper asked her.

Mrs. Gerhardt had not thought this would be left to her, but need
emboldened her.

"Would a dollar a day be too much?"

"No," said the housekeeper; "there is only about three days work to
do every week.  If you would come every afternoon you could do it."

"Very well," said the applicant.  "Shall we start to-day?"

"Yes; if you'll come with me now I'll show you where the cleaning
things are."

The hotel, into which they were thus summarily introduced, was a
rather remarkable specimen for the time and place.  Columbus, being
the State capital, and having a population of fifty thousand and a
fair passenger traffic, was a good field for the hotel business,
and the opportunity had been improved; so at least the Columbus
people proudly thought.  The structure, five stories in height, and
of imposing proportions, stood at one corner of the central public
square, where were the Capitol building and principal stores.  The
lobby was large and had been recently redecorated.  Both floor and
wainscot were of white marble, kept shiny by frequent polishing.
There was an imposing staircase with hand-rails of walnut and toe-
strips of brass.  An inviting corner was devoted to a news and
cigar-stand.  Where the staircase curved upward the clerk's desk
and offices had been located, all done in hardwood and ornamented
by novel gas-fixtures.  One could see through a door at one end of
the lobby to the barber-shop, with its chairs and array of shaving-
mugs.  Outside were usually two or three buses, arriving or
departing, in accordance with the movement of the trains.

To this caravanserai came the best of the political and social
patronage of the State.  Several Governors had made it their
permanent abiding place during their terms of office.  The two
United States Senators, whenever business called them to Columbus,
invariably maintained parlour chambers at the hotel.  One of them,
Senator Brander, was looked upon by the proprietor as more or less
of a permanent guest, because he was not only a resident of the
city, but an otherwise homeless bachelor.  Other and more transient
guests included Congressmen, State legislators and lobbyists,
merchants, professional men, and, after them, the whole raft of
indescribables who, coming and going, make up the glow and stir of
this kaleidoscopic world.

Mother and daughter, suddenly flung into this realm of superior
brightness, felt immeasurably overawed.  They went about too timid
to touch anything for fear of giving offence.  The great red-
carpeted hallway, which they were set to sweep, had for them all
the magnificence of a palace; they kept their eyes down and spoke
in their lowest tones.  When it came to scrubbing the steps and
polishing the brass-work of the splendid stairs both needed to
steel themselves, the mother against her timidity, the daughter
against the shame at so public an exposure.  Wide beneath lay the
imposing lobby, and men, lounging, smoking, passing constantly in
and out, could see them both.

"Isn't it fine?" whispered Genevieve, and started nervously at the
sound of her own voice.

"Yes," returned her mother, who, upon her knees, was wringing out
her cloth with earnest but clumsy hands.

"It must cost a good deal to live here, don't you think?"

"Yes," said her mother.  "Don't forget to rub into these little
corners.  Look here what you've left."

Jennie, mortified by this correction, fell earnestly to her task,
and polished vigorously, without again daring to lift her eyes.

With painstaking diligence they worked downward until about five
o'clock; it was dark outside, and all the lobby was brightly
lighted.  Now they were very near the bottom of the stairway.

Through the big swinging doors there entered from the chilly world
without a tall, distinguished, middle-aged gentleman, whose silk
hat and loose military cape-coat marked him at once, among the
crowd of general idlers, as some one of importance.  His face was
of a dark and solemn cast, but broad and sympathetic in its lines,
and his bright eyes were heavily shaded with thick, bushy, black
eyebrows.  Passing to the desk he picked up the key that had
already been laid out for him, and coming to the staircase, started
up.

The middle-aged woman, scrubbing at his feet, he acknowledged not
only by walking around her, but by graciously waving his hand, as
much as to say, "Don't move for me."

The daughter, however, caught his eye by standing up, her troubled
glance showing that she feared she was in his way.

He bowed and smiled pleasantly.

"You shouldn't have troubled yourself," he said,

Jennie only smiled.

When he had reached the upper landing an impulsive sidewise glance
assured him, more clearly than before, of her uncommonly
prepossessing appearance.  He noted the high, white forehead, with
its smoothly parted and plaited hair.  The eyes he saw were blue
and the complexion fair.  He had even time to admire the mouth and
the full cheeks--above all, the well-rounded, graceful form, full
of youth, health, and that hopeful expectancy which to the middle-
aged is so suggestive of all that is worth begging of Providence.
Without another look he went dignifiedly upon his way, but the
impression of her charming personality went with him.  This was the
Hon. George Sylvester Brander, junior Senator.

"Wasn't that a fine-looking man who went up just now?" observed
Jennie a few moments later.

"Yes, he was," said her mother.

"He had a gold-headed cane."

"You mustn't stare at people when they pass," cautioned her mother,
wisely.  "It isn't nice."

"I didn't stare at him," returned Jennie, innocently.  "He bowed to
me."

"Well, don't you pay any attention to anybody," said her mother.
"They may not like it."

Jennie fell to her task in silence, but the glamour of the great
world was having its effect upon her senses.  She could not help
giving ear to the sounds, the brightness, the buzz of conversation
and laughter surrounding her.  In one section of the parlour floor
was the dining-room, and from the clink of dishes one could tell
that supper was being prepared.  In another was the parlour proper,
and there some one came to play on the piano.  That feeling of rest
and relaxation which comes before the evening meal pervaded the
place.  It touched the heart of the innocent working-girl with
hope, for hers were the years, and poverty could not as yet fill
her young mind with cares.  She rubbed diligently always, and
sometimes forgot the troubled mother at her side, whose kindly eyes
were becoming invested with crows' feet, and whose lips half
repeated the hundred cares of the day.  She could only think that
all of this was very fascinating, and wish that a portion of it
might come to her.

At half-past five, the housekeeper, remembering them, came and
told them that they might go.  The fully finished stairway was
relinquished by both with a sigh of relief, and, after putting
their implements away, they hastened homeward, the mother, at
least, pleased to think that at last she had something to do.

As they passed several fine houses Jennie was again touched by that
half-defined emotion which the unwonted novelty of the hotel life
had engendered in her consciousness.

"Isn't it fine to be rich?" she said.

"Yes," answered her mother, who was thinking of the suffering
Veronica.

"Did you see what a big dining-room they had there?"

"Yes."

They went on past the low cottages and among the dead leaves of the
year.

"I wish we were rich," murmured Jennie, half to herself.

"I don't know just what to do," confided her mother with a long-
drawn sigh.  "I don't believe there's a thing to eat in the house."

"Let's stop and see Mr. Bauman again," exclaimed Jennie, her
natural sympathies restored by the hopeless note in her mother's
voice.

"Do you think he would trust us any more?"

"Let's tell him where we're working.  I will."

"Well," said her mother, wearily.

Into the small, dimly lighted grocery store, which was two blocks
from their house, they ventured nervously.  Mrs. Gerhardt was about
to begin, but Jennie spoke first.

"Will you let us have some bread to-night, and a little bacon?
We're working now at the Columbus House, and we'll be sure to pay
you Saturday."

"Yes," added Mrs. Gerhardt, "I have something to do."

Bauman, who had long supplied them before illness and trouble
began, knew that they told the truth.

"How long have you been working there?" he asked.

"Just this afternoon."

"You know, Mrs. Gerhardt," he said, "how it is with me.  I don't
want to refuse you.  Mr. Gerhardt is good for it, but I am poor,
too.  Times are hard," he explained further, "I have my family to
keep."

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Gerhardt, weakly.

Her old shoddy shawl hid her rough hands, red from the day's work,
but they were working nervously.  Jennie stood by in strained
silence.

"Well," concluded Mr. Bauman, "I guess it's all right this time.
Do what you can for me Saturday."

He wrapped up the bread and bacon, and, handing Jennie the parcel,
he added, with a touch of cynicism:

"When you get money again I guess you'll go and trade somewhere
else."

"No," returned Mrs. Gerhardt; "you know better than that."  But she
was too nervous to parley long.

They went out into the shadowy street, and on past the low cottages
to their own home.

"I wonder," said the mother, wearily, when they neared the door,
"if they've got any coal?"

"Don't worry," said Jennie.  "If they haven't I'll go."

"A man run us away," was almost the first greeting that the
perturbed George offered when the mother made her inquiry about the
coal.  "I got a little, though," he added.  "I threw it off a car."

Mrs. Gerhardt only smiled, but Jennie laughed.

"How is Veronica?" she inquired.

"She seems to be sleeping," said the father.  "I gave her medicine
again at five."

While the scanty meal was being prepared the mother went to the
sick child's bedside, taking up another long night's vigil quite as
a matter of course.

While the supper was being eaten Sebastian offered a suggestion,
and his larger experience in social and commercial matters made
his proposition worth considering.  Though only a car-builder's
apprentice, without any education except such as pertained to
Lutheran doctrine, to which he objected very strongly, he was
imbued with American colour and energy.  His transformed name of
Bass suited him exactly.  Tall, athletic, and well-featured for his
age, he was a typical stripling of the town.  Already he had
formulated a philosophy of life.  To succeed one must do something--
one must associate, or at least seem to associate, with those who
were foremost in the world of appearances.

For this reason the young boy loved to hang about the Columbus
House.  It seemed to him that this hotel was the centre and
circumference of all that was worth while in the social sense.  He
would go downtown evenings, when he first secured money enough to
buy a decent suit of clothes, and stand around the hotel entrance
with his friends, kicking his heels, smoking a two-for-five-cent
cigar, preening himself on his stylish appearance, and looking
after the girls.  Others were there with him--town dandies and
nobodies, young men who came there to get shaved or to drink a
glass of whisky.  And all of these he admired and sought to
emulate.  Clothes were the main touchstone.  If men wore nice
clothes and had rings and pins, whatever they did seemed
appropriate.  He wanted to be like them and to act like them, and
so his experience of the more pointless forms of life rapidly
broadened.

"Why don't you get some of those hotel fellows to give you their
laundry?" he asked of Jennie after she had related the afternoon's
experiences.  "It would be better than scrubbing the stairs."

"How do you get it?" she replied.

"Why, ask the clerk, of course."

This plan struck Jennie as very much worth while.

"Don't you ever speak to me if you meet me around there," he
cautioned her a little later, privately.  "Don't you let on that
you know me."

"Why?" she asked, innocently.

"Well, you know why," he answered, having indicated before that
when they looked so poor he did not want to be disgraced by having
to own them as relatives.  "Just you go on by.  Do you hear?"

"All right," she returned, meekly, for although this youth was not
much over a year her senior, his superior will dominated.

The next day on their way to the hotel she spoke of it to her
mother.

"Bass said we might get some of the laundry of the men at the hotel
to do."

Mrs. Gerhardt, whose mind had been straining all night at the
problem of adding something to the three dollars which her six
afternoons would bring her, approved of the idea.

"So we might," she said.  "I'll ask that clerk."

When they reached the hotel, however, no immediate opportunity
presented itself.  They worked on until late in the afternoon.
Then, as fortune would have it, the housekeeper sent them in to
scrub up the floor behind the clerk's desk.  That important
individual felt very kindly toward mother and daughter.  He liked
the former's sweetly troubled countenance and the latter's pretty
face.  So he listened graciously when Mrs. Gerhardt ventured meekly
to put the question which she had been revolving in her mind all
the afternoon.

"Is there any gentleman here," she said, "who would give me his
washing to do?  I'd be so very much obliged for it."

The clerk looked at her, and again recognised that absolute want
was written all over her anxious face.

"Let's see," he answered, thinking of Senator Brander and Marshall
Hopkins.  Both were charitable men, who would be more than glad to
aid a poor woman.  "You go up and see Senator Brander," he
continued.  "He's in twenty-two.  Here," he added, writing out the
number, "you go up and tell him I sent you."

Mrs. Gerhardt took the card with a tremour of gratefulness.  Her
eyes looked the words she could not say.

"That's all right," said the clerk, observing her emotion.  "You go
right up.  You'll find him in his room now."

With the greatest diffidence Mrs. Gerhardt knocked at number
twenty-two.  Jennie stood silently at her side.

After a moment the door was opened, and in the full radiance of the
bright room stood the Senator.  Attired in a handsome smoking-coat,
he looked younger than at their first meeting.

"Well, madam," he said, recognising the couple, and particularly
the daughter, "what can I do for you?"

Very much abashed, the mother hesitated in her reply.

"We would like to know if you have any washing you could let us
have to do?"

"Washing?" he repeated after her, in a voice which had a peculiarly
resonant quality.  "Washing?  Come right in.  Let me see."

He stepped aside with much grace, waved them in and closed the
door.  "Let me see," he repeated, opening and closing drawer after
drawer of the massive black-walnut bureau.  Jennie studied the room
with interest.  Such an array of nicknacks and pretty things on
mantel and dressing-table she had never seen before.  The Senator's
easy-chair, with a green-shaded lamp beside it, the rich heavy
carpet and the fine rugs upon the floor--what comfort, what luxury!

"Sit down; take those two chairs there," said the Senator
graciously, disappearing into a closet.

Still overawed, mother and daughter thought it more polite to
decline, but now the Senator had completed his researches and he
reiterated his invitation.  Very uncomfortably they yielded and
took chairs.

"Is this your daughter?" he continued, with a smile at Jennie.

"Yes, sir," said the mother; "she's my oldest girl."

"Is your husband alive?"

"What is his name?"

"Where does he live?"

To all of these questions Mrs. Gerhardt very humbly answered.

"How many children have you?" he went on.

"Six," said Mrs. Gerhardt.

"Well," he returned, "that's quite a family.  You've certainly done
your duty to the nation."

"Yes, sir," returned Mrs. Gerhardt, who was touched by his genial
and interesting manner.

"And you say this is your oldest daughter?"

"Yes, sir."

"What does your husband do?"

"He's a glass-blower.  But he's sick now."

During the colloquy Jennie's large blue eyes were wide with
interest.  Whenever he looked at her she turned upon him such a
frank, unsophisticated gaze, and smiled in such a vague, sweet way,
that he could not keep his eyes off of her for more than a minute
of the time.

"Well," he continued, sympathetically, "that is too bad!  I have
some washing here--not very much--but you are welcome to it.  Next
week there may be more."

He went about now, stuffing articles of apparel into a blue cotton
bag with a pretty design on the side.

"Do you want these any certain day?" questioned Mrs. Gerhardt.

"No," he said, reflectively, "any day next week will do."

She thanked him with a simple phrase, and started to go.

"Let me see," he said, stepping ahead of them and opening the door,
"you may bring them back Monday!"

"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Gerhardt.  "Thank you."

They went out and the Senator returned to his reading, but it was
with a peculiarly disturbed mind.

"Too bad," he said, closing his volume.  "There's something very
pathetic about those people."  Jennie's spirit of wonder and
appreciation was abroad in the room.

Mrs. Gerhardt and Jennie made their way anew through the shadowy
streets.  They felt immeasurably encouraged by this fortunate
venture.

"Didn't he have a fine room?" whispered Jennie.

"Yes," answered the mother; "he's a great man."

"He's a senator, isn't he?" continued the daughter.

"Yes."

"It must be nice to be famous," said the girl, softly.



CHAPTER II


The spirit of Jennie--who shall express it?  This daughter of
poverty, who was now to fetch and carry the laundry of this
distinguished citizen of Columbus, was a creature of a mellowness
of temperament which words can but vaguely suggest.  There are
natures born to the inheritance of flesh that come without
understanding, and that go again without seeming to have wondered
why.  Life, so long as they endure it, is a true wonderland, a
thing of infinite beauty, which could they but wander into it
wonderingly, would be heaven enough.  Opening their eyes, they see
a comfortable and perfect world.  Trees, flowers, the world of
sound and the world of colour.  These are the valued inheritance of
their state.  If no one said to them "Mine" they would wander
radiantly forth, singing the song which all the earth may some day
hope to hear.  It is the song of goodness.

Caged in the world of the material, however, such a nature is
almost invariably an anomaly.  That other world of flesh into which
has been woven pride and greed looks askance at the idealist, the
dreamer.  If one says it is sweet to look at the clouds, the answer
is a warning against idleness.  If one seeks to give ear to the
winds, it shall be well with his soul, but they will seize upon his
possessions.  If all the world of the so-called inanimate delay
one, calling with tenderness in sounds that seem to be too perfect
to be less than understanding, it shall be ill with the body.  The
hands of the actual are forever reaching toward such as these--
forever seizing greedily upon them.  It is of such that the bond
servants are made.

In the world of the actual, Jennie was such a spirit.  From her
earliest youth goodness and mercy had moulded her every impulse.
Did Sebastian fall and injure himself, it was she who struggled
with straining anxiety, carried him safely to his mother.  Did
George complain that he was hungry, she gave him all of her bread.
Many were the hours in which she had rocked her younger brothers
and sisters to sleep, singing whole-heartedly betimes and dreaming
far dreams.  Since her earliest walking period she had been as the
right hand of her mother.  What scrubbing, baking, errand-running,
and nursing there had been to do she did.  No one had ever heard
her rudely complain, though she often thought of the hardness of
her lot.  She knew that there were other girls whose lives were
infinitely freer and fuller, but, it never occurred to her to be
meanly envious; her heart might be lonely, but her lips continued
to sing.  When the days were fair she looked out of her kitchen
window and longed to go where the meadows were.  Nature's fine
curves and shadows touched her as a song itself.  There were times
when she had gone with George and the others, leading them away to
where a patch of hickory-trees flourished, because there were open
fields, with shade for comfort and a brook of living water.  No
artist in the formulating of conceptions, her soul still responded
to these things, and every sound and every sigh were welcome to her
because of their beauty.

When the soft, low call of the wood-doves, those spirits of the
summer, came out of the distance, she would incline her head and
listen, the whole spiritual quality of it dropping like silver
bubbles into her own great heart.

Where the sunlight was warm and the shadows flecked with its
splendid radiance she delighted to wonder at the pattern of it, to
walk where it was most golden, and follow with instinctive
appreciation the holy corridors of the trees.

Colour was not lost upon her.  That wonderful radiance which fills
the western sky at evening touched and unburdened her heart.

"I wonder," she said once with girlish simplicity, "how it would
feel to float away off there among those clouds."

She had discovered a natural swing of a wild grape-vine, and was
sitting in it with Martha and George.

"Oh, wouldn't it be nice if you had a boat up there," said George.

She was looking with uplifted face at a far-off cloud, a red island
in a sea of silver.

"Just supposing," she said, "people could live on an island like
that."

Her soul was already up there, and its elysian paths knew the
lightness of her feet.

"There goes a bee," said George, noting a bumbler winging by.

"Yes," she said, dreamily, "it's going home."

"Does everything have a home?" asked Martha.

"Nearly everything," she answered.

"Do the birds go home?" questioned George.

"Yes," she said, deeply feeling the poetry of it herself, "the
birds go home."

"Do the bees go home?" urged Martha.

"Yes, the bees go home."

"Do the dogs go home?" said George, who saw one travelling
lonesomely along the nearby road.

"Why, of course," she said, "you know that dogs go home."

"Do the gnats?" he persisted, seeing one of those curious spirals
of minute insects turning energetically in the waning light.

"Yes," she said, half believing her remark.  "Listen!"

"Oho," exclaimed George, incredulously, "I wonder what kind of
houses they live in."

"Listen!" she persisted, putting out her hand to still him.

It was that halcyon hour when the Angelus falls like a benediction
upon the waning day.  Far off the notes were sounding gently, and
nature, now that she listened, seemed to have paused also.  A
scarlet-breasted robin was hopping in short spaces upon the grass
before her.  A humming bee hummed, a cow-bell tinkled, while some
suspicious cracklings told of a secretly reconnoitering squirrel.
Keeping her pretty hand weighed in the air, she listened until the
long, soft notes spread and faded and her heart could hold no more.
Then she arose.

"Oh," she said, clenching her fingers in an agony of poetic
feeling.  There were crystal tears overflowing in her eyes.  The
wondrous sea of feeling in her had stormed its banks.  Of such was
the spirit of Jennie.



CHAPTER III


The junior Senator, George Sylvester Brander, was a man of peculiar
mould.  In him there were joined, to a remarkable degree, the
wisdom of the opportunist and the sympathetic nature of the true
representative of the people.  Born a native of southern Ohio, he
had been raised and educated there, if one might except the two
years in which he had studied law at Columbia University.  He knew
common and criminal law, perhaps, as well as any citizen of his
State, but he had never practised with that assiduity which makes
for pre-eminent success at the bar.  He had made money, and had had
splendid opportunities to make a great deal more if he had been
willing to stultify his conscience, but that he had never been able
to do.  And yet his integrity had not been at all times proof
against the claims of friendship.  Only in the last presidential
election he had thrown his support to a man for Governor who, he
well knew, had no claim which strictly honourable conscience could
have recognised.

In the same way, he had been guilty of some very questionable,
and one or two actually unsavory, appointments.  Whenever his
conscience pricked him too keenly he would endeavour to hearten
himself with his pet phrase, "All in a lifetime."  Thinking over
things quite alone in his easy-chair, he would sometimes rise up
with these words on his lips, and smile sheepishly as he did so.
Conscience was not by any means dead in him.  His sympathies, if
anything, were keener than ever.

This man, three times Congressman from the district of which
Columbus was a part, and twice United States Senator, had never
married.  In his youth he had had a serious love affair, but there
was nothing discreditable to him in the fact that it came to
nothing.  The lady found it inconvenient to wait for him.  He was
too long in earning a competence upon which they might subsist.

Tall, straight-shouldered, neither lean nor stout, he was to-day an
imposing figure.  Having received his hard knocks and endured his
losses, there was that about him which touched and awakened the
sympathies of the imaginative.  People thought him naturally
agreeable, and his senatorial peers looked upon him as not any too
heavy mentally, but personally a fine man.

His presence in Columbus at this particular time was due to the
fact that his political fences needed careful repairing.  The
general election had weakened his party in the State Legislature.
There were enough votes to re-elect him, but it would require the
most careful political manipulation to hold them together.  Other
men were ambitious.  There were a half-dozen available candidates,
any one of whom would have rejoiced to step into his shoes.  He
realised the exigencies of the occasion.  They could not well beat
him, he thought; but even if this should happen, surely the
President could be induced to give him a ministry abroad.

Yes, he might be called a successful man, but for all that Senator
Brander felt that he had missed something.  He had wanted to do so
many things.  Here he was, fifty-two years of age, clean,
honourable, highly distinguished, as the world takes it, but
single.  He could not help looking about him now and then and
speculating upon the fact that he had no one to care for him.  His
chamber seemed strangely hollow at times--his own personality
exceedingly disagreeable.

"Fifty!" he often thought to himself.  "Alone--absolutely alone."

Sitting in his chamber that Saturday afternoon, a rap at his door
aroused him.  He had been speculating upon the futility of his
political energy in the light of the impermanence of life and fame.

"What a great fight we make to sustain ourselves?" he thought.
"How little difference it will make to me a few years hence?"

He arose, and opening wide his door, perceived Jennie.  She had
come, as she had suggested to her mother, at this time, instead of
on Monday, in order to give a more favourable impression of
promptness.

"Come right in," said the Senator; and, as on the first occasion,
he graciously made way for her.

Jennie passed in, momentarily expecting some compliment upon the
promptitude with which the washing had been done.  The Senator
never noticed it at all.

"Well, my young lady," he said when she had put the bundle down,
"how do you find yourself this evening?"

"Very well," replied Jennie.  "We thought we'd better bring your
clothes to-day instead of Monday."

"Oh, that would not have made any difference," replied Brander
lightly.  "Just leave them on the chair."

Jennie, without considering the fact that she had been offered no
payment for the service rendered, was about to retire, had not the
Senator detained her.

"How is your mother?" he asked pleasantly.

"She's very well," said Jennie simply.

"And your little sister?  Is she any better?"

"The doctor thinks so," she replied.

"Sit down," he continued graciously.  "I want to talk to you."

Moving to a near-by chair, the young girl seated herself.

"Hem!" he went on, clearing his throat lightly.  "What seems to be
the matter with her?"

"She has the measles," returned Jennie.  "We thought once that she
was going to die."

Brander studied her face as she said this, and he thought he saw
something exceedingly pathetic there.  The girl's poor clothes and
her wondering admiration for his exalted station in life affected
him.  It made him feel almost ashamed of the comfort and luxury
that surrounded him.  How high up he was in the world, indeed!

"I am glad she is better now," he said kindly.  "How old is your
father?"

"Fifty-seven."

"And is he any better?"

"Oh yes, sir; he's around now, although he can't go out just yet."

"I believe your mother said he was a glass-blower by trade?"

"Yes, sir."

Brander well knew the depressed local conditions in this branch of
manufacture.  It had been part of the political issue in the last
campaign.  They must be in a bad way truly.

"Do all of the children go to school?" he inquired.

"Why, yes, sir," returned Jennie, stammering.  She was too
shamefaced to own that one of the children had been obliged to
leave school for the lack of shoes.  The utterance of the falsehood
troubled her.

He reflected awhile; then realising that he had no good excuse for
further detaining her, he arose and came over to her.  From his
pocket he took a thin layer of bills, and removing one, handed it
to her.

"You take that," he said, "and tell your mother that I said she
should use it for whatever she wants."

Jennie accepted the money with mingled feelings; it did not occur
to her to look and see how much it was.  The great man was so near
her, the wonderful chamber in which he dwelt so impressive, that
she scarcely realised what she was doing.

"Thank you," she said.  "Is there any day you want your washing
called for?" she added.

"Oh yes," he answered; "Monday--Monday evenings."

She went away, and in a half reverie he closed the door behind her.
The interest that he felt in these people was unusual.  Poverty and
beauty certainly made up an affecting combination.  He sat down in
his chair and gave himself over to the pleasant speculations which
her coming had aroused.  Why should he not help them?

"I'll find out where they live," he finally resolved.

In the days that followed Jennie regularly came for the clothes.
Senator Brander found himself more and more interested in her, and
in time he managed to remove from her mind that timidity and fear
which had made her feel uncomfortable in his presence.  One thing
which helped toward this was his calling her by her first name.
This began with her third visit, and thereafter he used it with
almost unconscious frequency.

It could scarcely be said that he did this in a fatherly spirit,
for he had little of that attitude toward any one.  He felt
exceedingly young as he talked to this girl, and he often wondered
whether it were not possible for her to perceive and appreciate him
on his youthful side.

As for Jennie, she was immensely taken with the comfort and luxury
surrounding this man, and subconsciously with the man himself, the
most attractive she had ever known.  Everything he had was fine,
everything he did was gentle, distinguished, and considerate.  From
some far source, perhaps some old German ancestors, she had
inherited an understanding and appreciation of all this.  Life
ought to be lived as he lived it; the privilege of being generous
particularly appealed to her.

Part of her attitude was due to that of her mother, in whose mind
sympathy was always a more potent factor than reason.  For
instance, when she brought to her the ten dollars Mrs. Gerhardt was
transported with joy.

"Oh," said Jennie, "I didn't know until I got outside that it was
so much.  He said I should give it to you."

Mrs. Gerhardt took it, and holding it loosely in her folded hands,
saw distinctly before her the tall Senator with his fine manners.

"What a fine man he is!" she said.  "He has a good heart."

Frequently throughout the evening and the next day Mrs. Gerhardt
commented upon this wonderful treasure-trove, repeating again and
again how good he must be or how large must be his heart.  When it
came to washing his clothes she almost rubbed them to pieces,
feeling that whatever she did she could scarcely do enough.
Gerhardt was not to know.  He had such stern views about accepting
money without earning it that even in their distress, she would
have experienced some difficulty in getting him to take it.
Consequently she said nothing, but used it to buy bread and meat,
and going as it did such a little way, the sudden windfall was
never noticed.

Jennie from now on, reflected this attitude toward the Senator,
and, feeling so grateful toward him, she began to talk more freely.
They came to be on such good terms that he gave her a little
leather picture-case from his dresser which he had observed her
admiring.  Every time she came he found excuse to detain her, and
soon discovered that, for all her soft girlishness, there lay deep-
seated in her a conscious deprecation of poverty and a shame of
having to own any need.  He honestly admired her for this, and,
seeing that her clothes were poor and her shoes worn, he began to
wonder how he could help her without offending.

Not infrequently he thought to follow her some evening, and see for
himself what the condition of the family might be.  He was a United
States Senator, however.  The neighbourhood they lived in must be
very poor.  He stopped to consider, and for the time the counsels
of prudence prevailed.  Consequently the contemplated visit was put
off.

Early in December, Senator Brander returned to Washington for three
weeks, and both Mrs. Gerhardt and Jennie were surprised to learn
one day that he had gone.  Never had he given them less than two
dollars a week for his washing, and several times it had been five.
He had not realised, perhaps, what a breach his absence would make
in their finances.  But there was nothing to do about it; they
managed to pinch along.  Gerhardt, now better, searched for work at
the various mills, and finding nothing, procured a saw-buck and
saw, and going from door to door, sought for the privilege of
sawing wood.  There was not a great deal of this to do, but he
managed by the most earnest labour to earn two, and sometimes
three, dollars a week.  This added to what his wife earned and what
Sebastian gave was enough to keep bread in their mouths, but
scarcely more.

It was at the opening of the joyous Christmas-time that the
bitterness of their poverty affected them most.  The Germans love
to make a great display at Christmas.  It is the one season of the
year when the fullness of their large family affection manifests
itself.  Warm in the appreciation of the joys of childhood, they
love to see the little ones enjoy their toys and games.  Father
Gerhardt at his saw-buck during the weeks before Christmas thought
of this very often.  What would little Veronica not deserve after
her long illness!  How he would have liked to give each of the
children a stout pair of shoes, the boys a warm cap, the girls a
pretty hood.  Toys and games and candy they always had had before.
He hated to think of the snow-covered Christmas morning and no
table richly piled with what their young hearts would most desire.

As for Mrs. Gerhardt, one could better imagine than describe her
feelings.  She felt so keenly about it that she could hardly bring
herself to speak of the dreaded hour to her husband.  She had
managed to lay aside three dollars in the hope of getting enough to
buy a ton of coal, and so put an end to poor George's daily
pilgrimage to the coalyard, but now as the Christmas week drew near
she decided to use it for gifts.  Father Gerhardt was also
secreting two dollars without the knowledge of his wife, thinking
that on Christmas Eve he could produce it at a critical moment, and
so relieve her maternal anxiety.

When the actual time arrived, however, there was very little to be
said for the comfort that they got out of the occasion.  The whole
city was rife with Christmas atmosphere.  Grocery stores and meat
markets were strung with holly.  The toy shops and candy stores
were radiant with fine displays of everything that a self-
respecting Santa Claus should have about him.  Both parents and
children observed it all--the former with serious thoughts of need
and anxiety, the latter with wild fancy and only partially
suppressed longings.

Frequently had Gerhardt said in their presence:

"Kriss Kringle is very poor this year.  He hasn't so very much to
give."

But no child, however poverty-stricken, could be made to believe
this.  Every time after so saying he looked into their eyes, but in
spite of the warning, expectation flamed in them undiminished.

Christmas coming on Tuesday, the Monday before there was no school.
Before going to the hotel Mrs. Gerhardt had cautioned George that
he must bring enough coal from the yards to last over Christmas
day.  The latter went at once with his two younger sisters, but
there being a dearth of good picking, it took them a long time to
fill their baskets, and by night they had gathered only a scanty
supply.

"Did you go for the coal?" asked Mrs. Gerhardt the first thing when
she returned from the hotel that evening.

"Yes," said George.

"Did you get enough for to-morrow?"

"Yes," he replied, "I guess so."

"Well, now, I'll go and look," she replied.  Taking the lamp, they
went out into the woodshed where the coal was deposited.

"Oh, my!" she exclaimed when she saw it; "why, that isn't near
enough.  You must go right off and get some more.

"Oh," said George, pouting his lips, "I don't want to go.  Let Bass
go."

Bass, who had returned promptly at a quarter-past six, was already
busy in the back bedroom washing and dressing preparatory to going
downtown.

"No," said Mrs. Gerhardt.  "Bass has worked hard all day.  You must
go."

"I don't want to," pouted George.

"All right," said Mrs. Gerhardt, "maybe to-morrow you'll be without
a fire, and then what?"

They went back to the house, but George's conscience was too
troubled to allow him to consider the case as closed.

"Bass, you come too," he called to his elder brother when he was
inside.

"Go where?" said Bass.

"To get some coal."

"No," said the former, "I guess not.  What do you take me for?"

"Well, then, I'll not," said George, with an obstinate jerk of his
head.

"Why didn't you get it up this afternoon?" questioned his brother
sharply; "you've had all day to do it."

"Aw, I did try," said George.  "We couldn't find enough.  I can't
get any when there ain't any, can I?"

"I guess you didn't try very hard," said the dandy.

"What's the matter now?" asked Jennie, who, coming in after having
stopped at the grocer's for her mother, saw George with a solemn
pout on his face.

"Oh, Bass won't go with me to get any coal?"

"Didn't you get any this afternoon?"

"Yes," said George, "but ma says I didn't get enough."

"I'll go with you," said his sister.  "Bass will you come along?"

"No," said the young man, indifferently, "I won't."  He was
adjusting his necktie and felt irritated.

"There ain't any," said George, "unless we get it off the cars.
There wasn't any cars where I was."

"There are, too," exclaimed Bass.

"There ain't," said George.

"Oh don't quarrel," said Jennie.  "Get the baskets and let's go
right now before it gets too late."

The other children, who had a fondness for their big sister got out
the implements of supply--Veronica a basket, Martha and William
buckets, and George a big clothes-basket, which he and Jennie were
to fill and carry between them.  Bass, moved by his sister's
willingness and the little regard he still maintained for her, now
made a suggestion.

"I'll tell you what you do, Jen," he said.  "You go over there with
the kids to Eighth Street and wait around those cars.  I'll be
along in a minute.  When I come by don't any of you pretend to know
me.  Just you say, 'Mister won't you please throw us some coal
down?' and then I'll get up on the cars and pitch off enough to
fill the baskets.  D'ye understand?"

"All right," said Jennie, very much pleased.

Out into the snowy night they went, and made their way to the
railroad tracks.  At the intersection of the street and the broad
railroad yard were many heavily laden cars of bituminous coal newly
backed in.  All of the children gathered within the shadow of one.
While they were standing there, waiting the arrival of their
brother, the Washington Special arrived, a long, fine train with
several of the new style drawing-room cars, the big plate-glass
windows shining and the passengers looking out from the depths of
their comfortable chairs.  The children instinctively drew back as
it thundered past.

"Oh, wasn't it long?" said George.

"Wouldn't I like to be a brakeman, though," sighed William.

Jennie, alone, kept silent, but to her particularly the suggestion
of travel and comfort had appealed.  How beautiful life must be for
the rich!

Sebastian now appeared in the distance, a mannish spring in his
stride, and with every evidence that he took himself seriously.  He
was of that peculiar stubbornness and determination that had the
children failed to carry out his plan of procedure he would have
gone deliberately by and refused to help them at all.

Martha, however, took the situation as it needed to be taken, and
piped out childishly, "Mister, won't you please throw us down some
coal?"

Sebastian stopped abruptly, and looked sharply at them as though he
were really a stranger, exclaimed "Why, certainly," and proceeded
to climb up on the car, from whence he cast down with remarkable
celerity more than enough chunks to fill their baskets.  Then as
though not caring to linger any longer amid such plebeian company,
he hastened across the network of tracks and was lost to view.

On their way home they encountered another gentleman, this time a
real one, with high hat and distinguished cape coat, whom Jennie
immediately recognised.  This was the honourable Senator himself,
newly returned from Washington, and anticipating a very unprofitable
Christmas.  He had arrived upon the express which had enlisted
the attention of the children, and was carrying his light grip
for the pleasure of it to the hotel.  As he passed he thought
that he recognised Jennie.

"Is that you, Jennie?" he said, and paused to be more certain.

The latter, who had discovered him even more quickly than he had
her, exclaimed, "Oh, there is Mr. Brander!"  Then, dropping her end
of the basket, with a caution to the children to take it right
home, she hurried away in the opposite direction.

The Senator followed, vainly calling three or four times "Jennie!
Jennie!"  Losing hope of overtaking her, and suddenly recognising,
and thereupon respecting, her simple, girlish shame, he stopped,
and turning back, decided to follow the children.  Again he felt
that same sensation which he seemed always to get from this girl--
the far cry between her estate and his.  It was something to be a
Senator to-night, here where these children were picking coal.
What could the joyous holiday of the morrow hold for them?  He
tramped along sympathetically, an honest lightness coming into his
step, and soon he saw them enter the gateway of the low cottage.
Crossing the street, he stood in the weak shade of the snow-laden
trees.  The light was burning with a yellow glow in a rear window.
All about was the white snow.  In the woodshed he could hear the
voices of the children, and once he thought he detected the form of
Mrs. Gerhardt.  After a time another form came shadowlike through
the side gate.  He knew who it was.  It touched him to the quick,
and he bit his lip sharply to suppress any further show of emotion.
Then he turned vigorously on his heel and walked away.

The chief grocery of the city was conducted by one Manning, a
stanch adherent of Brander, and one who felt honoured by the
Senator's acquaintance.  To him at his busy desk came the Senator
this same night.

"Manning," he said, "could I get you to undertake a little work for
me this evening?"

"Why, certainly, Senator, certainly," said the grocery-man.  "When
did you get back?  Glad to see you.  Certainly."

"I want you to get everything together that would make a nice
Christmas for a family of eight--father and mother and six
children--Christmas tree, groceries, toys--you know what I mean."

"Certainly, certainly, Senator."

"Never mind the cost now.  Send plenty of everything.  I'll give
you the address," and he picked up a note-book to write it.

"Why, I'll be delighted, Senator," went on Mr. Manning, rather
affected himself.  "I'll be delighted.  You always were generous."

"Here you are, Manning," said the Senator, grimly, from the mere
necessity of preserving his senatorial dignity.  "Send everything
at once, and the bill to me."

"I'll be delighted," was all the astonished and approving grocery-
man could say.

The Senator passed out, but remembering the old people, visited a
clothier and shoe man, and, finding that he could only guess at
what sizes might be required, ordered the several articles with the
privilege of exchange.  When his labours were over, he returned to
his room.

"Carrying coal," he thought, over and over.  "Really, it was very
thoughtless in me.  I mustn't forget them any more."



CHAPTER IV


The desire to flee which Jennie experienced upon seeing the Senator
again was attributable to what she considered the disgrace of her
position.  She was ashamed to think that he, who thought so well of
her, should discover her doing so common a thing.  Girl-like, she
was inclined to imagine that his interest in her depended upon
something else than her mere personality.

When she reached home Mrs. Gerhardt had heard of her flight from
the other children.

"What was the matter with you, anyway?" asked George, when she came
in.

"Oh, nothing," she answered, but immediately turned to her mother
and said, "Mr. Brander came by and saw us."

"Oh, did he?" softly exclaimed her mother.  "He's back then.  What
made you run, though, you foolish girl?"

"Well, I didn't want him to see me."

"Well, maybe he didn't know you, anyhow," she said, with a certain
sympathy for her daughter's predicament.

"Oh yes, he did, too," whispered Jennie.  "He called after me three
or four times."

Mrs. Gerhardt shook her head.

"What is it?" said Gerhardt, who had been hearing the conversation
from the adjoining room, and now came out.

"Oh, nothing," said the mother, who hated to explain the
significance which the Senator's personality had come to have in
their lives.  "A man frightened them when they were bringing the
coal."

The arrival of the Christmas presents later in the evening threw
the household into an uproar of excitement.  Neither Gerhardt nor
the mother could believe their eyes when a grocery wagon halted in
front of their cottage and a lusty clerk began to carry in the
gifts.  After failing to persuade the clerk that he had made a
mistake, the large assortment of good things was looked over with
very human glee.

"Just you never mind," was the clerk's authoritative words.  "I
know what I'm about.  Gerhardt, isn't it?  Well, you're the
people."

Mrs. Gerhardt moved about, rubbing her hands in her excitement, and
giving vent to an occasional "Well, isn't that nice now!"

Gerhardt himself was melted at the thought of the generosity of the
unknown benefactor, and was inclined to lay it all to the goodness
of a great local mill owner, who knew him and wished him well.
Mrs. Gerhardt tearfully suspected the source, but said nothing.
Jennie knew, by instinct, the author of it all.

The afternoon of the day after Christmas Brander encountered the
mother in the hotel, Jennie having been left at home to look after
the house.

"How do you do, Mrs. Gerhardt," he exclaimed genially extending his
hand.  "How did you enjoy your Christmas?"

Poor Mrs. Gerhardt took it nervously; her eyes filled rapidly with
tears.

"There, there," he said, patting her on the shoulder.  "Don't cry.
You mustn't forget to get my laundry to-day."

"Oh no, sir," she returned, and would have said more had he not
walked away.

From this on, Gerhardt heard continually of the fine Senator at the
hotel, how pleasant he was, and how much he paid for his washing.
With the simplicity of a German working man, he was easily
persuaded that Mr. Brander must be a very great and a very good
man.

Jennie, whose feelings needed no encouragement in this direction,
was more than ever prejudiced in his favour.

There was developing in her that perfection of womanhood, the full
mould of form, which could not help but attract any man.  Already
she was well built, and tall for a girl.  Had she been dressing in
the trailing skirts of a woman of fashion she would have made a
fitting companion for a man the height of the Senator.  Her eyes
were wondrously clear and bright, her skin fair, and her teeth
white and even.  She was clever, too, in a sensible way, and by no
means deficient in observation.  All that she lacked was training
and the assurance of which the knowledge of utter dependency
despoils one.  But the carrying of washing and the compulsion to
acknowledge almost anything as a favour put her at a disadvantage.

Nowadays when she came to the hotel upon her semi-weekly errand
Senator Brander took her presence with easy grace, and to this she
responded.  He often gave her little presents for herself, or for
her brothers and sisters, and he talked to her so unaffectedly that
finally the overawing sense of the great difference between them
was brushed away, and she looked upon him more as a generous friend
than as a distinguished Senator.  He asked her once how she would
like to go to a seminary, thinking all the while how attractive she
would be when she came out.  Finally, one evening, he called her to
his side.

"Come over here, Jennie," he said, "and stand by me."

She came, and, moved by a sudden impulse, he took her hand.

"Well, Jennie," he said, studying her face in a quizzical,
interrogative way, "what do you think of me, anyhow?"

"Oh," she answered, looking consciously away, "I don't know.  What
makes you ask me that?"

"Oh yes, you do," he returned.  "You have some opinion of me.  Tell
me now, what is it?"

"No, I haven't," she said, innocently.

"Oh yes, you have," he went on, pleasantly, interested by her
transparent evasiveness.  "You must think something of me.  Now,
what is it?"

"Do you mean do I like you?" she asked, frankly, looking down at
the big mop of black hair well streaked with grey, which hung about
his forehead, and gave an almost leonine cast to his fine face.

"Well, yes," he said, with a sense of disappointment.  She was
barren of the art of the coquette.

"Why, of course I like you," she replied, prettily.

"Haven't you ever thought anything else about me?" he went on.

"I think you're very kind," she went on, even more bashfully; she
realised now that he was still holding her hand.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"Well," she said, with fluttering eyelids, "isn't that enough?"

He looked at her, and the playful, companionable directness of her
answering gaze thrilled him through and through.  He studied her
face in silence while she turned and twisted, feeling, but scarcely
understanding, the deep import of his scrutiny.

"Well," he said at last, "I think you're a fine girl.  Don't you
think I'm a pretty nice man?"

"Yes," said Jennie, promptly.

He leaned back in his chair and laughed at the unconscious drollery
of her reply.  She looked at him curiously and smiled.

"What made you laugh?" she inquired.

"Oh, your answer," he returned.  "I really ought not to laugh,
though.  You don't appreciate me in the least.  I don't believe you
like me at all."

"But I do, though," she replied, earnestly.  "I think you're so
good."  Her eyes showed very plainly that she felt what she was
saying.

"Well," he said, drawing her gently down to him; then, at the same
instant he pressed his lips to her cheek.

"Oh!" she cried, straightening up, at once startled and frightened.

It was a new note in their relationship.  The senatorial quality
vanished in an instant.  She recognised in him something that she
had not felt before.  He seemed younger, too.  She was a woman to
him, and he was playing the part of a lover.  She hesitated, but
not knowing just what to do, did nothing at all.

"Well," he said, "did I frighten you?"

She looked at him, but moved by her underlying respect for this
great man, she said, with a smile, "Yes, you did."

"I did it because I like you so much."

She meditated upon this a moment, and then said, "I think I'd
better be going."

"Now then," he pleaded, "are you going to run away because of
that?"

"No," she said, moved by a curious feeling of ingratitude; "but I
ought to be going.  They'll be wondering where I am."

"You're sure you're not angry about it?"

"No," she replied, and with more of a womanly air than she had ever
shown before.  It was a novel experience to be in so authoritative
a position.  It was so remarkable that it was somewhat confusing to
both of them.

"You're my girl, anyhow," the Senator said, rising.  "I'm going to
take care of you in the future."

Jennie heard this, and it pleased her.  He was so well fitted, she
thought, to do wondrous things; he was nothing less than a
veritable magician.  She looked about her, and the thought of
coming into such a life and such an atmosphere was heavenly.  Not
that she fully understood his meaning, however.  He meant to be
good and generous, and to give her fine things.  Naturally she was
happy.  She took up the package that she had come for, not seeing
or feeling the incongruity of her position, while he felt it as a
direct reproof.

"She ought not to carry that," he thought.  A great wave of
sympathy swept over him.  He took her cheeks between his hands,
this time in a superior and more generous way.  "Never mind, little
girl," he said.  "You won't have to do this always.  I'll see what
I can do."

The outcome of this was simply a more sympathetic relationship
between them.  He did not hesitate to ask her to sit beside him on
the arm of his chair the next time she came, and to question her
intimately about the family's condition and her own desires.
Several times he noticed that she was evading his questions,
particularly in regard to what her father was doing.  She was
ashamed to own that he was sawing wood.  Fearing lest something
more serious was impending, he decided to go out some day and see
for himself.

This he did when a convenient morning presented itself and his
other duties did not press upon him.  It was three days before the
great fight in the Legislature began which ended in his defeat.
Nothing could be done in these few remaining days.  So he took his
cane and strolled forth, coming to the cottage in the course of a
half hour, and knocked boldly at the door.

Mrs. Gerhardt opened it.

"Good-morning," he said, cheerily; then, seeing her hesitate he
added, "May I come in?"

The good mother, who was all but overcome by his astonishing
presence, wiped her hands furtively upon her much-mended apron,
and, seeing that he waited for a reply, said:

"Oh yes.  Come right in."

She hurried forward, forgetting to close the door, and, offering
him a chair, asked him to be seated.

Brander, feeling sorry that he was the occasion of so much
confusion, said:  "Don't trouble yourself, Mrs. Gerhardt.  I was
passing and thought I'd come in.  How is your husband?"

"He's well, thank you," returned the mother.  "He's out working to-
day."

"Then he has found employment?"

"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Gerhardt, who hesitated, like Jennie to say
what it was.

"The children are all well now, and in school I hope?"

"Yes," replied Mrs. Gerhardt.  She had now unfastened her apron,
and was nervously turning it in her lap.

"That's good, and where is Jennie!"

The latter, who had been ironing, had abandoned the board and had
concealed herself in the bedroom, where she was busy tidying
herself in the fear that her mother would not have the forethought
to say that she was out, and so let her have a chance for escape.

"She's here," returned the mother.  "I'll call her."

"What did you tell him I was here for?" said Jennie, weakly.

"What could I do?" asked the mother.

Together they hesitated while the Senator surveyed the room.  He
felt sorry to think that such deserving people must suffer so; he
intended, in a vague way, to ameliorate their condition if
possible.

"Good-morning," the Senator said to Jennie, when finally she came
hesitatingly into the room.  "How do you do to-day?"

Jennie came forward, extending her hand and blushing.  She found
herself so much disturbed by this visit that she could hardly find
tongue to answer his questions.

"I thought," he said, "I'd come out and find where you live.  This
is a quite comfortable house.  How many rooms have you?"

"Five," said Jennie.  "You'll have to excuse the looks this
morning.  We've been ironing, and it's all upset."

"I know," said Brander, gently.  "Don't you think I understand,
Jennie?  You mustn't feel nervous about me."

She noticed the comforting, personal tone he always used with her
when she was at his room, and it helped to subdue her flustered
senses.

"You mustn't think it anything if I come here occasionally, I
intend to come.  I want to meet your father."

"Oh," said Jennie, "he's out to-day."

While they were talking however, the honest wood-cutter was coming
in at the gate with his buck and saw.  Brander saw him, and at once
recognised him by a slight resemblance to his daughter.

"There he is now, I believe," he said.

"Oh, is he?" said Jennie looking out.

Gerhardt, who was given to speculation these days, passed by the
window without looking up.  He put his wooden buck down, and,
hanging his saw on a nail on the side of the house, came in.

"Mother," he called, in German, and, then not seeing her, he came
to the door of the front room and looked in.

Brander arose and extended his hand.  The knotted and weather-
beaten German came forward, and took it with a very questioning
expression of countenance.

"This is my father, Mr. Brander," said Jennie, all her diffidence
dissolved by sympathy.  "This is the gentleman from the hotel,
papa, Mr. Brander."

"What's the name?" said the German, turning his head.

"Brander," said the Senator.

"Oh yes," he said, with a considerable German accent.  "Since I had
the fever I don't hear good.  My wife, she spoke to me of you."

"Yes," said the Senator, "I thought I'd come out and make your
acquaintance.  You have quite a family."

"Yes," said the father, who was conscious of his very poor garments
and anxious to get away.  "I have six children--all young.  She's
the oldest girl."

Mrs. Gerhardt now came back, and Gerhardt, seeing his chance, said
hurriedly:

"Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll go.  I broke my saw, and so I had
to stop work."

"Certainly," said Brander, graciously, realising now why Jennie had
never wanted to explain.  He half wished that she were courageous
enough not to conceal anything.

"Well, Mrs. Gerhardt," he said, when the mother was stiffly seated,
"I want to tell you that you mustn't look on me as a stranger.
Hereafter I want you to keep me informed of how things are going
with you.  Jennie won't always do it."

Jennie smiled quietly.  Mrs. Gerhardt only rubbed her hands.

"Yes," she answered, humbly grateful.

They talked for a few minutes, and then the Senator rose.  "Tell
your husband," he said, "to come and see me next Monday at my
office in the hotel.  I want to do something for him."

"Thank you," faltered Mrs. Gerhardt.

"I'll not stay any longer now," he added.  "Don't forget to have
him come."

"Oh, he'll come," she returned.

Adjusting a glove on one hand, he extended the other to Jennie.

"Here is your finest treasure, Mrs. Gerhardt," he said.  "I think
I'll take her."

"Well, I don't know," said the mother, "whether I could spare her
or not."

"Well," said the Senator, going toward the door, and giving Mrs.
Gerhardt his hand, "good-morning."

He nodded and walked out, while a half-dozen neighbours, who had
observe his entrance, peeked from behind curtains and drawn blinds
at the astonishing sight.

"Who can that be, anyhow?" was the general query.

"See what he gave me," said the innocent mother to her daughter the
moment he had closed the door.

It was a ten-dollar bill.  He had placed it softly in her hand as
he said good-bye.



CHAPTER V


Having been led by circumstances into an attitude of obligation
toward the Senator, it was not unnatural that Jennie should become
imbued with a most generous spirit of appreciation for everything
he had done and now continued to do.  The Senator gave her father a
letter to a local mill owner, who saw that he received something to
do.  It was not much, to be sure, a mere job as night-watchman, but
it helped, and old Gerhardt's gratitude was extravagant.  Never was
there such a great, such a good man!

Nor was Mrs. Gerhardt overlooked.  Once Brander sent her a dress,
and at another time a shawl.  All these benefactions were made in a
spirit of mingled charity and self-gratification, but to Mrs.
Gerhardt they glowed with but one motive.  Senator Brander was
good-hearted.

As for Jennie, he drew nearer to her in every possible way, so
that at last she came to see him in a light which would require
considerable analysis to make clear.  This fresh, young soul,
however, had too much innocence and buoyancy to consider for a
moment the world's point of view.  Since that one notable and
halcyon visit upon which he had robbed her of her original shyness,
and implanted a tender kiss upon her cheek, they had lived in a
different atmosphere.  Jennie was his companion now, and as he more
and more unbended, and even joyously flung aside the habiliments of
his dignity, her perception of him grew clearer.  They laughed and
chatted in a natural way, and he keenly enjoyed this new entrance
into the radiant world of youthful happiness.

One thing that disturbed him, however, was the occasional thought,
which he could not repress, that he was not doing right.  Other
people must soon discover that he was not confining himself
strictly to conventional relations, with this washer-woman's
daughter.  He suspected that the housekeeper was not without
knowledge that Jennie almost invariably lingered from a quarter to
three-quarters of an hour whenever she came for or returned his
laundry.  He knew that it might come to the ears of the hotel
clerks, and so, in a general way, get about town and work serious
injury, but the reflection did not cause him to modify his conduct.
Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was not
doing her any actual harm, and at other times he would argue that
he could not put this one delightful tenderness out of his life.
Did he not wish honestly to do her much good?

He thought of these things occasionally, and decided that he could
not stop.  The self-approval which such a resolution might bring
him was hardly worth the inevitable pain of the abnegation.  He had
not so very many more years to live.  Why die unsatisfied?

One evening he put his arm around her and strained her to his
breast.  Another time he drew her to his knee, and told her of his
life at Washington.  Always now he had a caress and a kiss for her,
but it was still in a tentative, uncertain way.  He did not want to
reach for her soul too deeply.

Jennie enjoyed it all innocently.  Elements of fancy and novelty
entered into her life.  She was an unsophisticated creature,
emotional, totally inexperienced in the matter of the affections,
and yet mature enough mentally to enjoy the attentions of this
great man who had thus bowed from his high position to make friends
with her.

One evening she pushed his hair back from his forehead as she stood
by his chair, and, finding nothing else to do, took out his watch.
The great man thrilled as he looked at her pretty innocence.

"Would you like to have a watch, too?" he asked.

"Yes, indeed, I would," said Jennie with a deep breath.

The next day he stopped as he was passing a jewellery store and
bought one.  It was gold, and had pretty ornamented hands.

"Jennie," he said, when she came the next time, "I want to show you
something.  See what time it is by my watch."

Jennie drew out the watch from his waistcoat pocket and started in
surprise.

"This isn't your watch!" she exclaimed, her face full of innocent
wonder.

"No," he said, delighted with his little deception.  "It's yours."

"Mine!" exclaimed Jennie.  "Mine!  Oh, isn't it lovely!"

"Do you think so?" he said.

Her delight touched and pleased him immensely.  Her face shone with
light and her eyes fairly danced.

"That's yours," he said.  "See that you wear it now, and don't lose
it."

"You're so good!" she exclaimed.

"No," he said, but he held her at arm's length by the waist to make
up his mind what his reward should be.  Slowly he drew her toward
him until, when very close, she put her arms about his neck, and
laid her cheek in gratitude against his own.  This was the
quintessence of pleasure for him.  He felt as he had been longing
to feel for years.

The progress of his idyl suffered a check when the great senatorial
fight came on in the Legislature.  Attacked by a combination of
rivals, Brander was given the fight of his life.  To his amazement
he discovered that a great railroad corporation, which had always
been friendly, was secretly throwing its strength in behalf of an
already too powerful candidate.  Shocked by this defection, he was
thrown alternately into the deepest gloom and into paroxysms of
wrath.  These slings of fortune, however lightly he pretended to
receive them, never failed to lacerate him.  It had been long since
he had suffered a defeat--too long.

During this period Jennie received her earliest lesson in the
vagaries of man.  For two weeks she did not even see him, and one
evening, after an extremely comfortless conference with his leader,
he met her with the most chilling formality.  When she knocked at
his door he only troubled to open it a foot, exclaiming almost
harshly:  "I can't bother about the clothes to-night.  Come to-
morrow."

Jennie retreated, shocked and surprised by this reception.  She did
not know what to think of it.  He was restored on the instant to
his far-off, mighty throne, and left to rule in peace.  Why should
he not withdraw the light of his countenance if it pleased him.
But why--

A day or two later he repented mildly, but had no time to readjust
matters.  His washing was taken and delivered with considerable
formality, and he went on toiling forgetfully, until at last he was
miserably defeated by two votes.  Astounded by this result, he
lapsed into gloomy dejection of soul.  What was he to do now?

Into this atmosphere came Jennie, bringing with her the lightness
and comfort of her own hopeful disposition.  Nagged to desperation
by his thoughts, Brander first talked to her to amuse himself; but
soon his distress imperceptibly took flight; he found himself
actually smiling.

"Ah, Jennie," he said, speaking to her as he might have done to a
child, "youth is on your side.  You possess the most valuable thing
in life."

"Do I?"

"Yes, but you don't realise it.  You never will until it is too
late."

"I love that girl," he thought to himself that night.  "I wish I
could have her with me always."

But fortune had another fling for him to endure.  It got about the
hotel that Jennie was, to use the mildest expression, conducting
herself strangely.  A girl who carries washing must expect
criticism if anything not befitting her station is observed in her
apparel.  Jennie was seen wearing the gold watch.  Her mother was
informed by the housekeeper of the state of things.

"I thought I'd speak to you about it," she said.  "People are
talking.  You'd better not let your daughter go to his room for the
laundry."

Mrs. Gerhardt was too astonished and hurt for utterance.  Jennie
had told her nothing, but even now she did not believe there was
anything to tell.  The watch had been both approved of and admired
by her.  She had not thought that it was endangering her daughter's
reputation.

Going home she worried almost incessantly, and talked with Jennie
about it.  The latter did not admit the implication that things had
gone too far.  In fact, she did not look at it in that light.  She
did not own, it is true, what really had happened while she was
visiting the Senator.

"It's so terrible that people should begin to talk!" said her
mother.  "Did you really stay so long in the room?"

"I don't know," returned Jennie, compelled by her conscience to
admit at least part of the truth.  "Perhaps I did."

"He has never said anything out of the way to you, has he?"

"No," answered her daughter, who did not attach any suspicion of
evil to what had passed between them.

If the mother had only gone a little bit further she might have
learned more, but she was only too glad, for her own peace of mind,
to hush the matter up.  People were slandering a good man, that she
knew.  Jennie had been the least bit indiscreet.  People were
always so ready to talk.  How could the poor girl, amid such
unfortunate circumstances, do otherwise than she did.  It made her
cry to think of it.

The result of it all was that she decided to get the washing
herself.

She came to his door the next Monday after this decision.  Brander,
who was expecting Jennie, was both surprised and disappointed.

"Why," he said to her, "what has become of Jennie?"

Having hoped that he would not notice, or, at least, not comment
upon the change, Mrs. Gerhardt did not know what to say.  She
looked up at him weakly in her innocent, motherly way, and said,
"She couldn't come to-night."

"Not ill, is she?" he inquired.

"No."

"I'm glad to hear that," he said resignedly.  "How have you been?"

Mrs. Gerhardt answered his kindly inquiries and departed.  After
she had gone he got to thinking the matter over, and wondered what
could have happened.  It seemed rather odd that he should be
wondering over it.

On Saturday, however, when she returned the clothes he felt that
there must be something wrong.

"What's the matter, Mrs. Gerhardt?" he inquired.  "Has anything
happened to your daughter?"

"No, sir," she returned, too troubled to wish to deceive him.

"Isn't she coming for the laundry any more?"

"I--I--" ventured the mother, stammering in her perturbation; "she--
they have been talking about her," she at last forced herself to
say.

"Who has been talking?" he asked gravely.

"The people here in the hotel."

"Who, what people?" he interrupted, a touch of annoyance showing in
his voice.

"The housekeeper."

"The housekeeper, eh!" he exclaimed.  "What has she got to say?"

The mother related to him her experience.

"And she told you that, did she?" he remarked in wrath.  "She
ventures to trouble herself about my affairs, does she?  I wonder
people can't mind their own business without interfering with mine.
Your daughter, Mrs. Gerhardt, is perfectly safe with me.  I have no
intention of doing her an injury.  It's a shame," he added
indignantly, "that a girl can't come to my room in this hotel
without having her motive questioned.  I'll look into this matter."

"I hope you don't think that I have anything to do with it," said
the mother apologetically.  "I know you like Jennie and wouldn't
injure her.  You've done so much for her and all of us, Mr.
Brander, I feel ashamed to keep her away."

"That's all right, Mrs. Gerhardt," he said quietly.  "You did
perfectly right.  I don't blame you in the least.  It is the lying
accusation passed about in this hotel that I object to.  We'll see
about that."

Mrs. Gerhardt stood there, pale with excitement.  She was afraid
she had deeply offended this man who had done so much for them.  If
she could only say something, she thought, that would clear this
matter up and make him feel that she was no tattler.  Scandal was
distressing to her.

"I thought I was doing everything for the best," she said at last.

"So you were," he replied.  "I like Jennie very much.  I have
always enjoyed her coming here.  It is my intention to do well by
her, but perhaps it will be better to keep her away, at least for
the present."

Again that evening the Senator sat in his easy-chair and brooded
over this new development.  Jennie was really much more precious to
him than he had thought.  Now that he had no hope of seeing her
there any more, he began to realise how much these little visits of
hers had meant.  He thought the matter over very carefully,
realised instantly that there was nothing to be done so far as the
hotel gossip was concerned, and concluded that he had really placed
the girl in a very unsatisfactory position.

"Perhaps I had better end this little affair," he thought.  "It
isn't a wise thing to pursue."

On the strength of this conclusion he went to Washington and
finished his term.  Then he returned to Columbus to await the
friendly recognition from the President which was to send him upon
some ministry abroad.  Jennie had not been forgotten in the least.
The longer he stayed away the more eager he was to get back.  When
he was again permanently settled in his old quarters he took up his
cane one morning, and strolled out in the direction of the cottage.
Arriving there, he made up his mind to go in, and knocking at the
door, he was greeted by Mrs. Gerhardt and her daughter with
astonished and diffident smiles.  He explained vaguely that he had
been away, and mentioned his laundry as if that were the object of
his visit.  Then, when chance gave him a few moments with Jennie
alone, he plunged in boldly.

"How would you like to take a drive with me to-morrow evening?" he
asked.

"I'd like it," said Jennie, to whom the proposition was a glorious
novelty.

He smiled and patted her cheek, foolishly happy to see her again.
Every day seemed to add to her beauty.  Graced with her clean white
apron, her shapely head crowned by the glory of her simply plaited
hair, she was a pleasing sight for any man to look upon.

He waited until Mrs. Gerhardt returned, and then, having
accomplished the purpose of his visit, he arose.

"I'm going to take your daughter out riding to-morrow evening," he
explained.  "I want to talk to her about her future."

"Won't that be nice?" said the mother.  She saw nothing incongruous
in the proposal.  They parted with smiles and much handshaking.

"That man has the best heart," commented Mrs. Gerhardt.  "Doesn't
he always speak so nicely of you?  He may help you to an education.
You ought to be proud."

"I am," said Jennie frankly.

"I don't know whether we had better tell your father or not,"
concluded Mrs. Gerhardt.  "He doesn't like for you to be out
evenings."

Finally they decided not to tell him.  He might not understand.

Jennie was ready when he called.  He could see by the weak-flamed,
unpretentious parlour-lamp that she was dressed for him, and that
the occasion had called out the best she had.  A pale lavender
gingham, starched and ironed, until it was a model of laundering,
set off her pretty figure to perfection.  There were little lace-
edged cuffs and a rather high collar attached to it.  She had no
gloves nor any jewellery, nor yet a jacket good enough to wear, but
her hair was done up in such a dainty way that it set off her well-
shaped head better than any hat, and the few ringlets that could
escape crowned her as with a halo.  When Brander suggested that she
should wear a jacket she hesitated a moment; then she went in and
borrowed her mother's cape, a plain grey woollen one.  Brander
realised now that she had no jacket, and suffered keenly to think
that she had contemplated going without one.

"She would have endured the raw night air," he thought, "and said
nothing of it."

He looked at her and shook his head reflectively.  Then they
started, and he quickly forgot everything but the great fact that
she was at his side.  She talked with freedom and with a gentle
girlish enthusiasm that he found irresistibly charming.

"Why, Jennie," he said, when she had called upon him to notice how
soft the trees looked, where, outlined dimly against the new rising
moon, they were touched with its yellow light, "you're a great one.
I believe you would write poetry if you were schooled a little."

"Do you suppose I could?" she asked innocently.

"Do I suppose, little girl?" he said, taking her hand.  "Do I
suppose?  Why, I know.  You're the dearest little day-dreamer in
the world.  Of course you could write poetry.  You live it.  You
are poetry, my dear.  Don't you worry about writing any."

This eulogy touched her as nothing else possibly could have done.
He was always saying such nice things.  No one ever seemed to like
or to appreciate her half as much as he did.  And how good he was!
Everybody said that.  Her own father.

They rode still farther, until suddenly remembering, he said:  "I
wonder what time it is.  Perhaps we had better be turning back.
Have you your watch?"

Jennie started, for this watch had been the one thing of which she
had hoped he would not speak.  Ever since he had returned it had
been on her mind.

In his absence the family finances had become so strained that she
had been compelled to pawn it.  Martha had got to that place in the
matter of apparel where she could no longer go to school unless
something new were provided for her.  And so, after much
discussion, it was decided that the watch must go.

Bass took it, and after much argument with the local pawnbroker, he
had been able to bring home ten dollars.  Mrs. Gerhardt expended
the money upon her children, and heaved a sigh of relief.  Martha
looked very much better.  Naturally, Jennie was glad.

Now, however, when the Senator spoke of it, her hour of retribution
seemed at hand.  She actually trembled, and he noticed her
discomfiture.

"Why, Jennie," he said gently, "what made you start like that?"

"Nothing," she answered.

"Haven't you your watch?"

She paused, for it seemed impossible to tell a deliberate
falsehood.  There was a strained silence; then she said, with a
voice that had too much of a sob in it for him not to suspect the
truth, "No, sir."  He persisted, and she confessed everything.

"Well," he said, "dearest, don't feel badly about it.  There never
was such another girl.  I'll get your watch for you.  Hereafter
when you need anything I want you to come to me.  Do you hear?  I
want you to promise me that.  If I'm not here, I want you to write
me.  I'll always be in touch with you from now on.  You will have
my address.  Just let me know, and I'll help you.  Do you
understand?"

"Yes," said Jennie.

"You'll promise to do that now, will you?"

"Yes," she replied.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

"Jennie," he said at last, the spring-like quality of the night
moving him to a burst of feeling, "I've about decided that I can't
do without you.  Do you think you could make up your mind to live
with me from now on?"

Jennie looked away, not clearly understanding his words as he meant
them.

"I don't know," she said vaguely.

"Well, you think about it," he said pleasantly.  "I'm serious.
Would you be willing to marry me, and let me put you away in a
seminary for a few years?"

"Go away to school?"

"Yes, after you marry me."

"I guess so," she replied.  Her mother came into her mind.  Maybe
she could help the family.

He looked around at her, and tried to make out the expression on
her face.  It was not dark.  The moon was now above the trees in
the east, and already the vast host of stars were paling before it.

"Don't you care for me at all, Jennie?" he asked.

"Yes!"

"You never come for my laundry any more, though," he returned
pathetically.  It touched her to hear him say this.

"I didn't do that," she answered.  "I couldn't help it; Mother
thought it was best."

"So it was," he assented.  "Don't feel badly.  I was only joking
with you.  You'd be glad to come if you could, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I would," she answered frankly.

He took her hand and pressed it so feelingly that all his kindly
words seemed doubly emphasised to her.  Reaching up impulsively,
she put her arms about him.  "You're so good to me," she said with
the loving tone of a daughter.

"You're my girl, Jennie," he said with deep feeling.  "I'd do
anything in the world for you."



CHAPTER VI


The father of this unfortunate family, William Gerhardt, was a man
of considerable interest on his personal side.  Born in the kingdom
of Saxony, he had had character enough to oppose the army
conscription iniquity, and to flee in his eighteenth year, to
Paris.  From there he had set forth for America, the land of
promise.

Arrived in this country, he had made his way, by slow stages from
New York to Philadelphia, and thence westward, working for a time
in the various glass factories in Pennsylvania.  In one romantic
village of this new world he had found his heart's ideal.  With
her, a simple American girl of German extraction, he had removed to
Youngstown, and thence to Columbus, each time following a glass
manufacturer by the name of Hammond, whose business prospered and
waned by turns.

Gerhardt was an honest man, and he liked to think that others
appreciated his integrity.  "William," his employer used to say to
him, "I want you because I can trust you," and this, to him, was
more than silver and gold.

This honesty, like his religious convictions, was wholly due to
inheritance.  He had never reasoned about it.  Father and
grandfather before him were sturdy German artisans, who had never
cheated anybody out of a dollar, and this honesty of intention came
into his veins undiminished.

His Lutheran proclivities had been strengthened by years of church-
going and the religious observances of home life.  In his father's
cottage the influence of the Lutheran minister had been all-
powerful; he had inherited the feeling that the Lutheran Church was
a perfect institution, and that its teachings were of all-
importance when it came to the issue of the future life.  His wife,
nominally of the Mennonite faith, was quite willing to accept her
husband's creed.  And so his household became a God-fearing one;
wherever they went their first public step was to ally themselves
with the local Lutheran church, and the minister was always a
welcome guest in the Gerhardt home.

Pastor Wundt, the shepherd of the Columbus church, was a sincere
and ardent Christian, but his bigotry and hard-and-fast orthodoxy
made him intolerant.  He considered that the members of his flock
were jeopardising their eternal salvation if they danced, played
cards, or went to theatres, and he did not hesitate to declare
vociferously that hell was yawning for those who disobeyed his
injunctions.  Drinking, even temperately, was a sin.  Smoking--
well, he smoked himself.  Right conduct in marriage, however, and
innocence before that state were absolute essentials of Christian
living.  Let no one talk of salvation, he had said, for a daughter
who had failed to keep her chastity unstained, or for the parents
who, by negligence, had permitted her to fall.  Hell was yawning
for all such.  You must walk the straight and narrow way if you
would escape eternal punishment, and a just God was angry with
sinners every day.

Gerhardt and his wife, and also Jennie, accepted the doctrines of
their Church as expounded by Mr. Wundt without reserve.  With
Jennie, however, the assent was little more than nominal.  Religion
had as yet no striking hold upon her.  It was a pleasant thing to
know that there was a heaven, a fearsome one to realise that there
was a hell.  Young girls and boys ought to be good and obey their
parents.  Otherwise the whole religious problem was badly jumbled
in her mind.

Gerhardt was convinced that everything spoken from the pulpit of
his church was literally true.  Death and the future life were
realities to him.

Now that the years were slipping away and the problem of the world
was becoming more and more inexplicable, he clung with pathetic
anxiety to the doctrines which contained a solution.  Oh, if he
could only be so honest and upright that the Lord might have no
excuse for ruling him out.  He trembled not only for himself, but
for his wife and children.  Would he not some day be held
responsible for them?  Would not his own laxity and lack of system
in inculcating the laws of eternal life to them end in his and
their damnation?  He pictured to himself the torments of hell, and
wondered how it would be with him and his in the final hour.

Naturally, such a deep religious feeling made him stern with his
children.  He was prone to scan with a narrow eye the pleasures and
foibles of youthful desire.  Jennie was never to have a lover if
her father had any voice in the matter.  Any flirtation with the
youths she might meet upon the streets of Columbus could have no
continuation in her home.  Gerhardt forgot that he was once young
himself, and looked only to the welfare of her spirit.  So the
Senator was a novel factor in her life.

When he first began to be a part of their family affairs the
conventional standards of Father Gerhardt proved untrustworthy.  He
had no means of judging such a character.  This was no ordinary
person coquetting with his pretty daughter.  The manner in which
the Senator entered the family life was so original and so
plausible that he became an active part before any one thought
anything about it.  Gerhardt himself was deceived, and, expecting
nothing but honour and profit to flow to the family from such a
source, accepted the interest and the service, and plodded
peacefully on.  His wife did not tell him of the many presents
which had come before and since the wonderful Christmas.

But one morning as Gerhardt was coming home from his night work a
neighbour named Otto Weaver accosted him.

"Gerhardt," he said, "I want to speak a word with you.  As a friend
of yours, I want to tell you what I hear.  The neighbours, you
know, they talk now about the man who comes to see your daughter."

"My daughter?" said Gerhardt, more puzzled and pained by this
abrupt attack than mere words could indicate.  "Whom do you mean?
I don't know of any one who comes to see my daughter."

"No?" inquired Weaver, nearly as much astonished as the recipient
of his confidences.  "The middle-aged man, with grey hair.  He
carries a cane sometimes.  You don't know him?"

Gerhardt racked his memory with a puzzled face.

"They say he was a senator once," went on Weaver, doubtful of what
he had got into; "I don't know."

"Ah," returned Gerhardt, measurably relieved.  "Senator Brander.
Yes.  He has come sometimes--so.  Well, what of it?"

"It is nothing," returned the neighbour, "only they talk.  He is no
longer a young man, you know.  Your daughter, she goes out with him
now a few times.  These people, they see that, and now they talk
about her.  I thought you might want to know."

Gerhardt was shocked to the depths of his being by these terrible
words.  People must have a reason for saying such things.  Jennie
and her mother were seriously at fault.  Still he did not hesitate
to defend his daughter.

"He is a friend of the family," he said confusedly.  "People should
not talk until they know.  My daughter has done nothing."

"That is so.  It is nothing," continued Weaver.  "People talk
before they have any grounds.  You and I are old friends.  I
thought you might want to know."

Gerhardt stood there motionless another minute or so, his jaw
fallen and a strange helplessness upon him.  The world was such a
grim thing to have antagonistic to you.  Its opinions and good
favour were so essential.  How hard he had tried to live up to its
rules!  Why should it not be satisfied and let him alone?

"I am glad you told me," he murmured as he started homeward.  "I
will see about it.  Good-bye."

Gerhardt took the first opportunity to question his wife.

"What is this about Senator Brander coming out to call on Jennie?"
he asked in German.  "The neighbours are talking about it."

"Why, nothing," answered Mrs. Gerhardt, in the same language.  She
was decidedly taken aback at his question.  "He did call two or
three times."

"You didn't tell me that," he returned, a sense of her frailty in
tolerating and shielding such weakness in one of their children
irritating him.

"No," she replied, absolutely nonplussed.  "He has only been here
two or three times."

"Two or three times," exclaimed Gerhardt, the German tendency to
talk loud coming upon him.  "Two or three times!  The whole
neighbourhood talks about it.  What is this, then?"

"He only called two or three times," Mrs. Gerhardt repeated weakly.

"Weaver comes to me on the street," continued Gerhardt, "and tells
me that my neighbours are talking of the man my daughter is going
with.  I didn't know anything about it.  There I stood.  I didn't
know what to say.  What kind of a way is that?  What must the man
think of me?"

"There is nothing the matter," declared the mother, using an
effective German idiom.  "Jennie has gone walking with him once or
twice.  He has called here at the house.  What is there now in that
for the people to talk about?  Can't the girl have any pleasure at
all?"

"But he is an old man," returned Gerhardt, voicing the words of
Weaver.  "He is a public citizen.  What should he want to call on a
girl like Jennie for?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Gerhardt, defensively.  "He comes here to
the house.  I don't know anything but good about the man.  Can I
tell him not to come?"

Gerhardt paused at this.  All that he knew of the Senator was
excellent.  What was there now that was so terrible about it?

"The neighbours are so ready to talk.  They haven't got anything
else to talk about now, so they talk about Jennie.  You know
whether she is a good girl or not.  Why should they say such
things?" and tears came into the soft little mother's eyes.

"That is all right," grumbled Gerhardt, "but he ought not to want
to come around and take a girl of her age out walking.  It looks
bad, even if he don't mean any harm."

At this moment Jennie came in.  She had heard the talking in the
front bedroom, where she slept with one of the children, but had
not suspected its import.  Now her mother turned her back and bent
over the table where she was making biscuit, in order that her
daughter might not see her red eyes.

"What's the matter?" she inquired, vaguely troubled by the tense
stillness in the attitude of both her parents.

"Nothing," said Gerhardt firmly.

Mrs. Gerhardt made no sign, but her very immobility told something.
Jennie went over to her and quickly discovered that she had been
weeping.

"What's the matter?" she repeated wonderingly, gazing at her
father.

Gerhardt only stood there, his daughter's innocence dominating his
terror of evil.

"What's the matter?" she urged softly of her mother.

"Oh, it's the neighbours," returned the mother brokenly.  "They're
always ready to talk about something they don't know anything
about."

"Is it me again?" inquired Jennie, her face flushing faintly.

"You see," observed Gerhardt, apparently addressing the world in
general, "she knows.  Now, why didn't you tell me that he was
coming here?  The neighbours talk, and I hear nothing about it
until to-day.  What kind of a way is that, anyhow?"

"Oh," exclaimed Jennie, out of the purest sympathy for her mother,
"what difference does it make?"

"What difference?" cried Gerhardt, still talking in German,
although Jennie answered in English.  "Is it no difference that men
stop me on the street and speak of it?  You should be ashamed of
yourself to say that.  I always thought well of this man, but now,
since you don't tell me about him, and the neighbours talk, I don't
know what to think.  Must I get my knowledge of what is going on in
my own home from my neighbours?"

Mother and daughter paused.  Jennie had already begun to think that
their error was serious.

"I didn't keep anything from you because it was evil," she said.
"Why, he only took me out riding once."

"Yes, but you didn't tell me that," answered her father.

"You know you don't like me to go out after dark," replied Jennie.
"That's why I didn't.  There wasn't anything else to hide about
it."

"He shouldn't want you to go out after dark with him," observed
Gerhardt, always mindful of the world outside.  "What can he want
with you.  Why does he come here?  He is too old, anyhow.  I don't
think you ought to have anything to do with him--such a young girl
as you are."

"He doesn't want to do anything except help me," murmured Jennie.
"He wants to marry me."

"Marry you?  Ha!  Why doesn't he tell me that!" exclaimed Gerhardt.
"I shall look into this.  I won't have him running around with my
daughter, and the neighbours talking.  Besides, he is too old.  I
shall tell him that.  He ought to know better than to put a girl
where she gets talked about.  It is better he should stay away
altogether."

This threat of Gerhardt's, that he would tell Brander to stay away,
seemed simply terrible to Jennie and to her mother.  What good
could come of any such attitude?  Why must they be degraded before
him?  Of course Brander did call again, while Gerhardt was away at
work, and they trembled lest the father should hear of it.  A few
days later the Senator came and took Jennie for a long walk.
Neither she nor her mother said anything to Gerhardt.  But he was
not to be put off the scent for long.

"Has Jennie been out again with that man?" he inquired of Mrs.
Gerhardt the next evening.

"He was here last night," returned the mother, evasively.

"Did she tell him he shouldn't come any more?"

"I don't know.  I don't think so."

"Well, now, I will see for myself once whether this thing will be
stopped or not," said the determined father.  "I shall talk with
him.  Wait till he comes again."

In accordance with this, he took occasion to come up from his
factory on three different evenings, each time carefully surveying
the house, in order to discover whether any visitor was being
entertained.  On the fourth evening Brander came, and inquiring for
Jennie, who was exceedingly nervous, he took her out for a walk.
She was afraid of her father, lest some unseemly things should
happen, but did not know exactly what to do.

Gerhardt, who was on his way to the house at the time, observed her
departure.  That was enough for him.  Walking deliberately in upon
his wife, he said:

"Where is Jennie?"

"She is out somewhere," said her mother.

"Yes, I know where," said Gerhardt.  "I saw her.  Now wait till she
comes home.  I will tell him."

He sat down calmly, reading a German paper and keeping an eye upon
his wife, until, at last, the gate clicked, and the front door
opened.  Then he got up.

"Where have you been?" he exclaimed in German.

Brander, who had not suspected that any trouble of this character
was pending, felt irritated and uncomfortable.  Jennie was covered
with confusion.  Her mother was suffering an agony of torment in
the kitchen.

"Why, I have been out for a walk," she answered confusedly.

"Didn't I tell you not to go out any more after dark?" said
Gerhardt, utterly ignoring Brander.

Jennie coloured furiously, unable to speak a word.

"What is the trouble?" inquired Brander gravely.  "Why should you
talk to her like that?"

"She should not go out after dark," returned the father rudely.  "I
have told her two or three times now.  I don't think you ought to
come here any more, either."

"And why?" asked the Senator, pausing to consider and choose his
words.  "Isn't this rather peculiar?  What has your daughter done?"

"What has she done!" exclaimed Gerhardt, his excitement growing
under the strain he was enduring, and speaking almost unaccented
English in consequence.  "She is running around the streets at
night when she oughtn't to be.  I don't want my daughter taken out
after dark by a man of your age.  What do you want with her anyway?
She is only a child yet."

"Want?" said the Senator, straining to regain his ruffled dignity.
"I want to talk with her, of course.  She is old enough to be
interesting to me.  I want to marry her if she will have me."

"I want you to go out of here and stay out of here," returned the
father losing all sense of logic, and descending to the ordinary
level of parental compulsion.  "I don't want you to come around my
house any more.  I have enough trouble without my daughter being
taken out and given a bad name."

"I tell you frankly," said the Senator, drawing himself up to his
full height, "that you will have to make clear your meaning.  I
have done nothing that I am ashamed of.  Your daughter has not come
to any harm through me.  Now, I want to know what you mean by
conducting yourself in this manner."

"I mean," said Gerhardt, excitedly repeating himself, "I mean, I
mean that the whole neighbourhood talks about how you come around
here, and have buggy-rides and walks with my daughter when I am not
here--that's what I mean.  I mean that you are no man of honourable
intentions, or you would not come taking up with a little girl who
is only old enough to be your daughter.  People tell me well enough
what you are.  Just you go and leave my daughter alone."

"People!" said the Senator.  "Well, I care nothing for your people.
I love your daughter, and I am here to see her because I do love
her.  It is my intention to marry her, and if your neighbours have
anything to say to that, let them say it.  There is no reason why
you should conduct yourself in this manner before you know what my
intentions are."

Unnerved by this unexpected and terrible altercation, Jennie had
backed away to the door leading out into the dining-room, and her
mother, seeing her, came forward.

"Oh," said the latter, breathing excitedly, "he came home when you
were away.  What shall we do?"  They clung together, as women do,
and wept silently.  The dispute continued.

"Marry, eh," exclaimed the father.  "Is that it?"

"Yes," said the Senator, "marry, that is exactly it.  Your daughter
is eighteen years of age and can decide for herself.  You have
insulted me and outraged your daughter's feelings.  Now, I wish you
to know that it cannot stop here.  If you have any cause to say
anything against me outside of mere hearsay I wish you to say it."

The Senator stood before him, a very citadel of righteousness.  He
was neither loud-voiced nor angry-mannered, but there was a
tightness about his lips which bespoke the man of force and
determination.

"I don't want to talk to you any more," returned Gerhardt, who was
checked but not overawed.  "My daughter is my daughter.  I am the
one who will say whether she shall go out at night, or whether she
shall marry you, either.  I know what you politicians are.  When I
first met you I thought you were a fine man, but now, since I see
the way you conduct yourself with my daughter, I don't want
anything more to do with you.  Just you go and stay away from here.
That's all I ask of you."

"I am sorry, Mrs. Gerhardt," said Brander, turning deliberately
away from the angry father, "to have had such an argument in your
home.  I had no idea that your husband was opposed to my visits.
However, I will leave the matter as it stands for the present.  You
must not take all this as badly as it seems."

Gerhardt looked on in astonishment at his coolness.

"I will go now," he said, again addressing Gerhardt, "but you
mustn't think that I am leaving this matter for good.  You have
made a serious mistake this evening.  I hope you will realise that.
I bid you good-night."  He bowed slightly and went out.

Gerhardt closed the door firmly.  "Now," he said, turning to his
daughter and wife, "we will see whether we are rid of him or not.
I will show you how to go after night upon the streets when
everybody is talking already."

In so far as words were concerned, the argument ceased, but looks
and feelings ran strong and deep, and for days thereafter scarcely
a word was spoken in the little cottage.  Gerhardt began to brood
over the fact that he had accepted his place from the Senator and
decided to give it up.  He made it known that no more of the
Senator's washing was to be done in their house, and if he had not
been sure that Mrs. Gerhardt's hotel work was due to her own
efforts in finding it he would have stopped that.  No good would
come out of it, anyway.  If she had never gone to the hotel all
this talk would never have come upon them.

As for the Senator, he went away decidedly ruffled by this crude
occurrence.  Neighbourhood slanders are bad enough on their own
plane, but for a man of his standing to descend and become involved
in one struck him now as being a little bit unworthy.  He did not
know what to do about the situation, and while he was trying to
come to some decision several days went by.  Then he was called to
Washington, and he went away without having seen Jennie again.

In the meantime the Gerhardt family struggled along as before.
They were poor, indeed, but Gerhardt was willing to face poverty if
only it could be endured with honour.  The grocery bills were of
the same size, however.  The children's clothing was steadily
wearing out.  Economy had to be practised, and payments stopped on
old bills that Gerhardt was trying to adjust.

Then came a day when the annual interest on the mortgage was due,
and yet another when two different grocery-men met Gerhardt on the
street and asked about their little bills.  He did not hesitate to
explain just what the situation was, and to tell them with
convincing honesty that he would try hard and do the best he could.
But his spirit was unstrung by his misfortunes.  He prayed for the
favour of Heaven while at his labour, and did not hesitate to use
the daylight hours that he should have had for sleeping to go
about--either looking for a more remunerative position or to obtain
such little jobs as he could now and then pick up.  One of them was
that of cutting grass.

Mrs. Gerhardt protested that he was killing himself, but he
explained his procedure by pointing to their necessity.

"When people stop me on the street and ask me for money I have no
time to sleep."

It was a distressing situation for all of them.

To cap it all, Sebastian got in jail.  It was that old coal-
stealing ruse of his practised once too often.  He got up on a car
one evening while Jennie and the children waited for him, and a
railroad detective arrested him.  There had been a good deal of
coal stealing during the past two years, but so long as it was
confined to moderate quantities the railroad took no notice.  When,
however, customers of shippers complained that cars from the
Pennsylvania fields lost thousands of pounds in transit to
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and other points, detectives were
set to work.  Gerhardt's children were not the only ones who preyed
upon the railroad in this way.  Other families in Columbus--many of
them--were constantly doing the same thing, but Sebastian happened
to be seized upon as the Columbus example.

"You come off that car now," said the detective, suddenly appearing
out of the shadows.  Jennie and the other children dropped their
baskets and buckets and fled for their lives.  Sebastian's first
impulse was to jump and run, but when he tried it the detective
grabbed him by the coat.

"Hold on here," he exclaimed.  "I want you."

"Aw, let go," said Sebastian savagely, for he was no weakling.
There was nerve and determination in him, as well as a keen sense
of his awkward predicament.

"Let go, I tell you," he reiterated, and giving a jerk, he almost
upset his captor.

"Come here now," said the detective, pulling him viciously in an
effort to establish his authority.

Sebastian came, but it was with a blow which staggered his
adversary.

There was more struggling, and then a passing railroad hand came to
the detective's assistance.  Together they hurried him toward the
depot, and there discovering the local officer, turned him over.
It was with a torn coat, scarred hands and face, and a black eye
that Sebastian was locked up for the night.

When the children came home they could not say what had happened to
their brother, but as nine o'clock struck, and then ten and eleven,
and Sebastian did not return, Mrs. Gerhardt was beside herself.  He
had stayed out many a night as late as twelve and one, but his
mother had a foreboding of something terrible to-night.  When half-
past one arrived, and no Sebastian, she began to cry.

"Some one ought to go up and tell your father," she said.  "He may
be in jail."

Jennie volunteered, but George, who was soundly sleeping, was
awakened to go along with her.

"What!" said Gerhardt, astonished to see his two children.

"Bass hasn't come yet," said Jennie, and then told the story of the
evening's adventure in explanation.

Gerhardt left his work at once, walking back with his two children
to a point where he could turn off to go to the jail.  He guessed
what had happened, and his heart was troubled.

"Is that so, now!" he repeated nervously, rubbing his clumsy hands
across his wet forehead.

Arrived at the station-house, the sergeant in charge told him
curtly that Bass was under arrest.

"Sebastian Gerhardt?" he said, looking over his blotter; "yes, here
he is.  Stealing coal and resisting an officer.  Is he your boy?"

"Oh, my!" said Gerhardt, "Ach Gott!"  He actually wrung his hands
in distress.

"Want to see him?" asked the sergeant.

"Yes, yes," said the father.

"Take him back, Fred," said the other to the old watchman in
charge, "and let him see the boy."

When Gerhardt stood in the back room, and Sebastian was brought out
all marked and tousled, he broke down and began to cry.  No word
could cross his lips because of his emotion.

"Don't cry, pop," said Sebastian bravely.  "I couldn't help it.
It's all right.  I'll be out in the morning."

Gerhardt only shook with his grief.

"Don't cry," continued Sebastian, doing his very best to restrain
his own tears.  "I'll be all right.  What's the use of crying?"

"I know, I know," said the grey-headed parent brokenly, "but I
can't help it.  It is my fault that I should let you do that."

"No, no, it isn't," said Sebastian.  "You couldn't help it.  Does
mother know anything about it?"

"Yes, she knows," he returned.  "Jennie and George just came up
where I was and told me.  I didn't know anything about it until
just now," and he began to cry again.

"Well, don't you feel badly," went on Bass, the finest part of his
nature coming to the surface.  "I'll be all right.  Just you go
back to work now, and don't worry.  I'll be all right."

"How did you hurt your eye?" asked the father, looking at him with
red eyes.

"Oh, I had a little wrestling match with the man who nabbed me,"
said the boy, smiling bravely.  "I thought I could get away."

"You shouldn't do that, Sebastian," said the father.  "It may go
harder with you on that account.  When does your case come up?"

"In the morning, they told me," said Bass.  "Nine o'clock."

Gerhardt stayed with his son for some time, and discussed the
question of bail, fine, and the dire possibility of a jail sentence
without arriving at any definite conclusion.  Finally he was
persuaded by Bass to go away, but the departure was the occasion
for another outburst of feeling; he was led away shaking and broken
with emotion.

"It's pretty tough," said Bass to himself as he was led back to his
cell.  He was thinking solely of his father.  "I wonder what ma
will think."

The thought of this touched him tenderly.  "I wish I'd knocked the
dub over the first crack," he said.  "What a fool I was not to get
away."



CHAPTER VII


Gerhardt was in despair; he did not know any one to whom he could
appeal between the hours of two and nine o'clock in the morning.
He went back to talk with his wife, and then to his post of duty.
What was to be done?  He could think of only one friend who was
able, or possibly willing to do anything.  This was the glass
manufacturer, Hammond; but he was not in the city.  Gerhardt did
not know this, however.

When nine o'clock came, he went alone to the court, for it was
thought advisable that the others should stay away.  Mrs. Gerhardt
was to hear immediately what happened.  He would come right back.

When Sebastian was lined up inside the dock he had to wait a long
time, for there were several prisoners ahead of him.  Finally his
name was called, and the boy was pushed forward to the bar.
"Stealing coal, Your Honour, and resisting arrest," explained the
officer who had arrested him.

The magistrate looked at Sebastian closely; he was unfavourably
impressed by the lad's scratched and wounded face.

"Well, young man," he said, "what have you to say for yourself?
How did you get your black eye?"

Sebastian looked at the judge, but did not answer.

"I arrested him," said the detective.  "He was on one of the
company's cars.  He tried to break away from me, and when I held
him he assaulted me.  This man here was a witness," he added,
turning to the railroad hand who had helped him.

"Is that where he struck you?" asked the Court, observing the
detective's swollen jaw.

"Yes, sir," he returned, glad of an opportunity to be further
revenged.

"If you please," put in Gerhardt, leaning forward, "he is my boy.
He was sent to get the coal.  He--"

"We don't mind what they pick up around the yard," interrupted the
detective, "but he was throwing it off the cars to half a dozen
others."

"Can't you earn enough to keep from taking coal off the coal cars?"
asked the Court; but before either father or son had time to answer
he added, "What is your business?"

"Car builder," said Sebastian.

"And what do you do?" he questioned, addressing Gerhardt.

"I am watchman at Miller's furniture factory."

"Um," said the court, feeling that Sebastian's attitude remained
sullen and contentious.  "Well, this young man might be let off on
the coal-stealing charge, but he seems to be somewhat too free with
his fists.  Columbus is altogether too rich in that sort of thing.
Ten dollars."

"If you please," began Gerhardt, but the court officer was already
pushing him away.

"I don't want to hear any more about it," said the judge.  "He's
stubborn, anyhow.  What's the next case?"

Gerhardt made his way over to his boy, abashed and yet very glad it
was no worse.  Somehow, he thought, he could raise the money.
Sebastian looked at him solicitously as he came forward.

"It's all right," said Bass soothingly.  "He didn't give me half a
chance to say anything."

"I'm only glad it wasn't more," said Gerhardt nervously.  "We will
try and get the money."

Going home to his wife, Gerhardt informed the troubled household of
the result.  Mrs. Gerhardt stood white and yet relieved, for ten
dollars seemed something that might be had.  Jennie heard the whole
story with open mouth and wide eyes.  It was a terrible blow to
her.  Poor Bass!  He was always so lively and good-natured.  It
seemed awful that he should be in jail.

Gerhardt went hurriedly to Hammond's fine residence, but he was not
in the city.  He thought then of a lawyer by the name of Jenkins,
whom he knew in a casual way, but Jenkins was not at his office.
There were several grocers and coal merchants whom he knew well
enough, but he owed them money.  Pastor Wundt might let him have
it, but the agony such a disclosure to that worthy would entail
held him back.  He did call on one or two acquaintances, but these,
surprised at the unusual and peculiar request, excused themselves.
At four o'clock he returned home, weary and exhausted.

"I don't know what to do," he said despairingly.  "If I could only
think."

Jennie thought of Brander, but the situation had not accentuated
her desperation to the point where she could brave her father's
opposition and his terrible insult to the Senator, so keenly
remembered, to go and ask.  Her watch had been pawned a second
time, and she had no other means of obtaining money.

The family council lasted until half-past ten, but still there was
nothing decided.  Mrs. Gerhardt persistently and monotonously
turned one hand over in the other and stared at the floor.
Gerhardt ran his hand through his reddish brown hair distractedly.
"It's no use," he said at last.  "I can't think of anything."

"Go to bed, Jennie," said her mother solicitously; "get the others
to go.  There's no use their sitting up.  I may think of something.
You go to bed."

Jennie went to her room, but the very thought of repose was
insupportable.  She had read in the paper, shortly after her
father's quarrel with the Senator, that the latter had departed for
Washington.  There had been no notice of his return.  Still he
might be in the city.  She stood before a short, narrow mirror that
surmounted a shabby bureau, thinking.  Her sister Veronica, with
whom she slept, was already composing herself to dreams.  Finally a
grim resolution fixed itself in her consciousness.  She would go
and see Senator Brander.  If HE were in town he would help Bass.
Why shouldn't she--he loved her.  He had asked over and over to
marry her.  Why should she not go and ask him for help?

She hesitated a little while, then hearing Veronica breathing
regularly, she put on her hat and jacket, and noiselessly opened
the door into the sitting-room to see if any one were stirring.

There was no sound save that of Gerhardt rocking nervously to and
fro in the kitchen.  There was no light save that of her own small
room-lamp and a gleam from under the kitchen door.  She turned and
blew the former out--then slipped quietly to the front door, opened
it and stepped out into the night.

A waning moon was shining, and a hushed sense of growing life
filled the air, for it was nearing spring again.  As Jennie hurried
along the shadowy streets--the arc light had not yet been invented--
she had a sinking sense of fear; what was this rash thing she was
about to do?  How would the Senator receive her?  What would he
think?  She stood stock-still, wavering and doubtful; then the
recollection of Bass in his night cell came over her again, and she
hurried on.

The character of the Capitol Hotel was such that it was not
difficult for a woman to find ingress through the ladies' entrance
to the various floors of the hotel at any hour of the night.  The
hotel, not unlike many others of the time, was in no sense loosely
conducted, but its method of supervision in places was lax.  Any
person could enter, and, by applying at a rear entrance to the
lobby, gain the attention of the clerk.  Otherwise not much notice
was taken of those who came and went.

When she came to the door it was dark save for a low light burning
in the entry-way.  The distance to the Senator's room was only a
short way along the hall of the second floor.  She hurried up the
steps, nervous and pale, but giving no other outward sign of the
storm that was surging within her.  When she came to his familiar
door she paused; she feared that she might not find him in his
room; she trembled again to think that he might be there.  A light
shone through the transom, and, summoning all her courage, she
knocked.  A man coughed and bestirred himself.

His surprise as he opened the door knew no bounds.  "Why, Jennie!"
he exclaimed.  "How delightful!  I was thinking of you.  Come in--
come in."

He welcomed her with an eager embrace.

"I was coming out to see you, believe me, I was.  I was thinking
all along how I could straighten this matter out.  And now you
come.  But what's the trouble?"

He held her at arm's length and studied her distressed face.  The
fresh beauty of her seemed to him like cut lilies wet with dew.

He felt a great surge of tenderness.

"I have something to ask you," she at last brought herself to say.
"My brother is in jail.  We need ten dollars to get him out, and I
didn't know where else to go."

"My poor child!" he said, chafing her hands.  "Where else should
you go?  Haven't I told you always to come to me?  Don't you know,
Jennie, I would do anything in the world for you?"

"Yes," she gasped.

"Well, then, don't worry about that any more.  But won't fate ever
cease striking at you, poor child?  How did your brother come to
get in jail?"

"They caught him throwing coal down from the cars," she replied.

"Ah!" he replied, his sympathies touched and awakened.  Here was
this boy arrested and fined for what fate was practically driving
him to do.  Here was this girl pleading with him at night, in his
room, for what to her was a great necessity--ten dollars; to him,
a mere nothing.  "I will arrange about your brother," he said
quickly.  "Don't worry.  I can get him out in half an hour.  You
sit here now and be comfortable until I return."

He waved her to his easy-chair beside a large lamp, and hurried out
of the room.

Brander knew the sheriff who had personal supervision of the county
jail.  He knew the judge who had administered the fine.  It was but
a five minutes' task to write a note to the judge asking him to
revoke the fine, for the sake of the boy's character, and send it
by a messenger to his home.  Another ten minutes' task to go
personally to the jail and ask his friend, the sheriff, to release
the boy then and there.

"Here is the money," he said.  "If the fine is revoked you can
return it to me.  Let him go now."

The sheriff was only too glad to comply.  He hastened below to
personally supervise the task, and Bass, a very much astonished
boy, was set free.  No explanations were vouchsafed him.

"That's all right now," said the turnkey.  "You're at liberty.  Run
along home and don't let them catch you at anything like that
again."

Bass went his way wondering, and the ex-Senator returned to his
hotel trying to decide just how this delicate situation should be
handled.  Obviously Jennie had not told her father of her mission.
She had come as a last resource.  She was now waiting for him in
his room.

There are crises in all men's lives when they waver between the
strict fulfilment of justice and duty and the great possibilities
for personal happiness which another line of conduct seems to
assure.  And the dividing line is not always marked and clear.  He
knew that the issue of taking her, even as his wife, was made
difficult by the senseless opposition of her father.  The opinion
of the world brought up still another complication.  Supposing he
should take her openly, what would the world say?  She was a
significant type emotionally, that he knew.  There was something
there--artistically, temperamentally, which was far and beyond the
keenest suspicion of the herd.  He did not know himself quite what
it was, but he felt a largeness of feeling not altogether squared
with intellect, or perhaps better yet, experience, which was worthy
of any man's desire.  "This remarkable girl," he thought, seeing
her clearly in his mind's eye.

Meditating as to what he should do, he returned to his hotel, and
the room.  As he entered he was struck anew with her beauty, and
with the irresistible appeal of her personality.  In the glow of
the shaded lamp she seemed