dollars, and if you'll let me have it for six months I will pay it back with interest."

"I can't do it, sir."

"You mean that you won't do it."

"You heard me, sir."

"I realize the bad form in which I present my case, Mr. McElwin, and I know that if you had made a practice of doing business in this way you would not have been nearly so successful, but I will pledge you my word that if you will let me have the money——"

"Good day, sir, good day."

Lyman walked out, not feeling so humorous as when he went in. He looked up and down the dingy, drowsy street. At first he might have been half amused at his failure, tickled with the idea of describing it to Caruthers and the newspaper man, but a sense of humiliation came to him. He knew that in the warfare of business his operation was but a guerrilla's dash, and he was ashamed of himself; and yet he reflected that his great enemy might have been gentler to him. He walked slowly down the street, without an objective point; he passed the group of village jokers, sitting in front of the drug store, with their chairs tipped back against the wall; he passed the planing mill, with its rasping noise, and in his whimsical fancy it sounded like the Town Council snoring. He loitered near a garden where plum trees were in bloom; he looked over at a solemn child digging in the dirt; he caught sight of a pale man with the mark of death upon him, lying near a window, slowly fanning himself. He spoke to the child and the wretched little one looked up and said: "I am digging a grave for my pa." Lyman leaned heavily upon the fence; his heart was touched, and taking out a small piece of money he tossed it to the boy. The grave digger took it up, looked at it a moment in sad astonishment, put it aside and returned to his work.

The office was deserted when Lyman returned. Caruthers had not hung a hope on the result of the attempted negotiations.

CHAPTER IV.

Top

A Fog Between Them.

The following afternoon when Lyman went to the office, having spent the earlier hours in the court house, to assure the Judge that he had no motions to make, and no case to be passed over to the next term—he found Caruthers with his feet on the table.

"Getting hot," said Caruthers.

"Is it? I thought we had been playing freeze-out," Lyman replied, throwing his hat upon the table and sitting down.

"Then you didn't do anything with his Royal Flush?"

"Brother McElwin? No. He fenced with his astonishment until he could find words, and then he granted me the privilege to retire."

"Wouldn't take a mortgage on the library?"

"No; he said it wasn't worth a hundred."

"But you assured him that it was."

"No; I had to acknowledge that it wasn't."

"You are a fool."

"Yes, perhaps; but I'm not a thief."

"No! But it's more respectable to be a thief than a pauper."

"It is not very comforting to be both—to know that you are one and to feel that you are the other."

"Lyman, that sort of doctrine may suit a long-tailed coat, a white necktie and a countenance pinched by piety, but it doesn't suit me."

"It suits me," Lyman replied. "I was brought up on it. I think mother baked it in with the beans."

"Watercolor nonsense!" said Caruthers. "My people were as honest as anybody, but they didn't teach me to look for the worst of it."

"But didn't they teach you that without a certain moral force there can be no real and lasting achievement?"

Caruthers turned and nodded his head toward the bank. "Is there any moral force over there? Did you notice any saintly precepts on his wall? I don't think you did. But wasn't there many a sign that said, 'get money'?"

"Caruthers, you join with the rest of this town in the belief that McElwin is a great man. I don't. He is a community success, a neighborhood's strong man, but in the hands of the giants who live in the real world he is a weakling."

"He is strong enough, though, not to tremble at the sound of a footstep at the door, and that's exactly what we sit here doing day after day. The joy of the hoped-for client is driven away by the fear of the collector." He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "I don't feel that there's any advantage in being hooked up with a saint."

"I don't know," Lyman replied. "I never tried it."

"I have," said Caruthers, looking at him.

Lyman laughed and rubbed his hands together. "You are the only one that has ever insinuated such a compliment, if you mean that I am a saint. But I hold that there's quite a stretch between a saint and a man who has a desire simply to be honest. Saint—" He laughed again. "Why, the people where I was brought up called me a rake."

"They were angels. But why don't you say where you were 'raised.' Why do you say 'brought up?' You were not brought up; you were raised."

"Yes, that's true, I guess. But we raised vegetables where I was brought up."

"Cabbages?"

"Yes, some cabbages. Round about here, though, they appear to make pumpkins more of a specialty. But come a little nearer with your meaning concerning the saint. I take it that you are tired of the partnership. Am I right?"

"Well," Caruthers spoke up, "we haven't done anything and we have no prospects."

"You are right," said Lyman. "But I am poorer and you are about as well off as you were."

"Do you mean to insinuate—"

"Oh, I don't insinuate, though it's a habit among the people where I was brought up."

"If you don't insinuate, what then? what do you mean?"

"That you've got about all the money I had."

"The devil, you say!"

"I didn't mention the devil. I didn't think it was necessary to speak in the third person of one who is already present."

Caruthers started and took his feet off the table. Lyman regarded him with a cool smile.

"Lyman, I thought that we might have parted friends."

"We can at least part as acquaintances," Lyman replied. "Until a few moments ago I was willing to stand a good deal from you; that part of your principles that I do not like I was willing to ascribe to a difference of opinion, but just now you called me a fool because I had refused to declare those books to be worth a hundred dollars. Up to that time we might have parted in reasonably good humor, but since then I haven't thought very well of you. And you'll have to take it back before you leave."

"You say I'll have to take it back."

"Yes, that's what I said."

"I never had to take anything back."

"No? Then you are about to encounter a new phase of life. Singular, isn't it, that we never know when we are about to stumble upon something new."

"You don't mean——"

"I don't know that I do. But I mean that you'll take that back or carry away a thrashing that will make you stagger. Did you ever see a man wabbling off after a thrashing that he was hardly able to carry? Sad sight sometimes. The last man that I whipped weighed about forty pounds more than I do. He presumed on his weight. But he soon found out that his flesh was very much in his way. He was a saw mill man and a bully; and it so tickled Uncle Buckley that nothing would do but I must come to his house and live as one of the family. Out at Fox Grove a man who won't be imposed upon stands high."

"Lyman, I don't want any trouble, and——"

"Oh, it won't be any trouble."

"And I acknowledge that I was hasty. I take it back, and here's my hand on it."

"I'm obliged to you for taking it back, Caruthers, but I don't want to take your hand. I don't understand it, but a spiritual something seems to have arisen between us."

"All right," said Caruthers, "but I hope we don't part as enemies."