THE RECLAIMERS

BY MARGARET HILL McCARTER

Author of "VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS"

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

The Reclaimers

Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers

Printed in the United States of America

Published October, 1918

TO
MAY BELLEVILLE BROWN
CRITIC, COUNSELLOR, COMFORTER

CONTENTS

PART I. JERRY

I. The Heir Apparent
II. Uncle Cornie's Throw
III. Hitching the Wagon to a Star
IV. Between Edens
V. New Eden's Problem
VI. Paradise Lost

PART II. JERRY AND JOE

VII. Unhitching the Wagon from a Star
VIII. If a Man Went Right with Himself
IX. If a Woman Went Right with Herself
X. The Snare of the Fowler
XI. An Interlude in "Eden"
XII. This Side of the Rubicon

PART III. JERRY AND EUGENE—AND JOE

XIII. How a Good Mother Lives On
XIV. Jim Swaim's Wish
XV. Drawing Out Leviathan with a Hook
XVI. A Postlude in "Eden"
XVII. The Flesh-pots of the Winnwoc
XVIII. The Lord Hath His Way in the Storm
XIX. Reclaimed

THE RECLAIMERS

I

JERRY

I

THE HEIR APPARENT

Only the good little snakes were permitted to enter the "Eden" that belonged to Aunt Jerry and Uncle Cornie Darby. "Eden," it should be explained, was the country estate of Mrs. Jerusha Darby—a wealthy Philadelphian—and her husband, Cornelius Darby, a relative by marriage, so to speak, whose sole business on earth was to guard his wife's wealth for six hours of the day in the city, and to practise discus-throwing out at "Eden" for two hours every evening.

Of course these two were never familiarly "Aunt" and "Uncle" to this country neighborhood, nor to any other community. Far, oh, far from that! They were Aunt and Uncle only to Jerry Swaim, the orphaned and only child of Mrs. Darby's brother Jim, whose charming girlish presence made the whole community, wherever she might chance to be. They were cousin, however, to Eugene Wellington, a young artist of more than ordinary merit, also orphaned and alone, except for a sort of cousinship with Uncle Cornelius.

"Eden" was a beautifully located and handsomely appointed estate of two hundred acres, offering large facilities to any photographer seeking magazine illustrations of country life in America. Indeed, the place was, as Aunt Jerry Darby declared, "summer and winter, all shot up by camera-toters and dabbed over with canvas-stretchers' paints," much to the owner's disgust, to whom all camera-toters and artists, except Cousin Eugene Wellington, were useless idlers. The rustic little railway station, hidden by maple-trees, was only three or four good discus-throws from the house. But the railroad itself very properly dropped from view into a wooded valley on either side of the station. There was nothing of cindery ugliness to mar the spot where the dwellers in "Eden" could take the early morning train for the city, or drop off in the cool of the afternoon into a delightful pastoral retreat. Beyond the lawns and buildings, gardens and orchards, the land billowed away into meadow and pasture and grain-field, with an insert of leafy grove where song-birds builded an Eden all their own. The entire freehold of Aunt Jerry Darby and Uncle Cornie, set down in the middle of a Western ranch, would have been a day's journey from its borders. And yet in it country life was done into poetry, combining city luxuries and conveniences with the dehorned, dethorned comfort and freedom of idyllic nature. What more need be said for this "Eden" into which only the good little snakes were permitted to enter?

In the late afternoon Aunt Jerry sat in the rose-arbor with her Japanese work-basket beside her, and a pearl tatting-shuttle