AUGUSTUS
THOMAS
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
"I'M AWFULLY IN LOVE WITH YOU "
THE
WITCHING HOUR
BY
AUGUSTUS THOMAS
%
ILLUSTRATED FROM f
SCENES IN THE PLAY ;
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP 1
PUBLISHERS
AMrt
Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
P.S 3
Copyright, 1908, by AUGUSTUS THOMAS.
All rights reserved.
Published October, 1908.
THE WITCHING HOUR
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THE WITCHING HOUR
'"PHE audience that filled Macauley's Theatre was
1 one of the most intellectual and fashionable
that Louisville had ever seen. The lighter operas
were not uncommon, but Wagner was a curiosity if
not yet a fad, and both the curious and the devoted
were in attendance. The curtain had gone up on the
final act.
Jack Brookfield was leaning against the back wall
of the auditorium. He was watching the occupants
of the proscenium-box just over the drummer more
especially the man and the boy and girl who occupied
the three chairs in the back of the box. Besides
Brookfield himself these three were perhaps the only
persons not intent upon the scene on the stage.
Brookfield could see, as he watched her through
his glasses, that his niece the girl in the box was
annoyed. He knew her temperament well enough to
interpret accurately the sudden frown, the spasmodic
twitching at one corner of the shapely mouth. He
also knew well enough the man who was breathing
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over her shoulder to divine that some offence was
being given.
The boy in the box watched the couple beside him
with jealous eyes.
Presently the man, with a motion that confessed
the clandestine character of his speech, oblivious of
or indifferent to the boy who watched him, turned
with the directness of one positively spoken to and
looked across the theatre into Brookfield's glasses.
Brookfield shifted his gaze to the stage, but not quick
ly enough to avoid the man's detection of the fact
that he was being watched. The girl, who sat slight
ly in front of him, was in some way, though without
communication, aware of his action, and, turning, she
also looked at her uncle. But Brookfield was now in
tent on the stage, and the man in the box, finding
himself no longer watched, continued his addresses.
"This isn't an opera audience," he said; "it isn't
an opera company. Some day you will see the real
thing at Co vent Garden or at La Scala."
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh yes, you will," he persisted; "I'll take you
there."
The girl spoke to him obliquely behind her fan.
"I wish you wouldn't talk to me now I want to
listen to the music."
Hardmuth leaned back in his chair and readjusted
his shirt bosom, which was bulging from the waist
coat. He turned to the boy, and in rough playful
ness put a strong hand on his knee and gripped it
viciously. The boy, angrier than before, threw Hard-
muth's hand from his knee with an exclamation that
THE WITCHING HOUR
caused those near them to breathe a sibilant expostu
lation, and the three persons in the front of the box
looked back inquiringly. The girl, flushed with em
barrassment at the attention they had attracted,
and, wishing also to fix that attention upon the
proper offender, said:
"You see, you are disturbing the audience."
"That shows we're the real thing," Hardmuth an
swered, laughing audibly.
The indignant persons in the parquet shifted un
easily in their seats. The girl's mother turned to the
couple with a warning finger on her lips, and with an
admonitory "Viola" to her daughter and a vexed
"Clay" to the boy, the box-party subsided into quiet.
But as the incident passed and the others became ab
sorbed in the action on the stage, Hardmuth hitched
his chair a trifle closer to Viola and resumed his stac
cato whisper over her shoulder.
"You know when I said I'd take you there I didn't
mean you'd go as a prima donna and that I should
go as an impresario don't make any mistake about
that." He touched her suggestively on the elbow
and leaned back with a smile of self-satisfaction. 4
Hardmuth 's experience with the women he had
known had taught him that an attempted approach
to their favor through compliment and delicate ser
vice was good time wasted. He believed that the
atmosphere of shyness which surrounds most girls
of Viola Campbell's age was assumed that it was
a little barrier of hypocrisy before which they kept
in waiting the timid applicant while they examined
him at leisure. His experience had justified his
3
THE WITCHING HOUR
belief that this insulation could be broken through,
perhaps utterly dissipated, by a few diplomatic but
no less forceful shocks to their sensibilities. He had
also by nature and by cultivation the safe and ten
tative method of approach in which the cheap poli
tician and corruptionist is skilled. With him insult
ing audacity masqueraded as tolerable playfulness.
If rebuked, it was gaucherie; if accepted and suc
cessful, it was conquest. He leaned slightly to his
left, and through the tail of his eye endeavored to
ascertain how Viola had taken his sally. Perhaps she
had not understood him. He remembered previous
occasions when he had been too indirect. He there
fore returned to the charge.
"I'm not going as a Cook's agent don't mean to
take the entire seminary class." He paused watch
fully. "And I think I could arrange it with mother."
The sextet on the stage was finishing at that mo
ment, and, under cover of the applause that fol
lowed, Viola leaned forward in pretended comment
to Ellinger, who sat in the front of the box with Viola's
mother and Mrs. Whipple. Hardmuth was in doubt.
The conductor lifted his baton for an encore, the
house recomposed itself. Viola was too inexperienced
to proceed courageously with her half -formed inten
tion to change seats with Ellinger; moreover, there
was another admonitory glance from her mother, so
she fell back and kept her place.
Hardmuth admired the ample arch of her neck, as
he would have admired a similar point of excellence in
a Kentucky horse. During the half -minute since he
had spoken to her there had gathered under the fine
4
THE WITCHING HOUR
outline of her cheek and partly overspread her throat
some inter-blending spots of red, like thumb marks.
They were unusual but not especially novel trophies
to Hardmuth, and they had not yet been danger sig
nals ; the girl was certainly not as indifferent to him
as she had pretended. Hardmuth was so constituted
that in the absence of direct evidence he would never
interpret a departure from indifference as a sign of
disfavor. Viola's agitation encouraged him.
"I said I thought I could fix it with mother, and
I'm sure I could fix it with your uncle Jack."
An instant look of relief came over Viola's face at
the mention of her uncle. A sense of protection was
always present with her whenever she thought of
him; there was no danger from this man at her side,
nor from any man, while she had Uncle Jack. The
expression of relief lilted into half a smile. Hardmuth
tapped her approvingly and dominantly on the elbow,
and added:
"And I will fix it!"
That she drew away her arm, that she turned with a
frown above open eyes and with lips parted in a swift
impulse of resentment, meant only spirited going to
Hardmuth. She had smiled at his proposal to fix it
with Uncle Jack, and by the method of Hardmuth 's
measure negotiations had been opened.
Brookfield had moved from his position at the back
wall to the newel-post of the balcony stairway which
mounted from the broad foyer of the theatre. He
was thinking of JFIardmuth's consciousness of the fact
that he had bcyc-n watched. The thought recurred to
him vaguely that he had read or heard it said some-
5
THE WITCHING HOUR
where that almost any person, if regarded intently,
would turn about and look at the gazer. He was won
dering whether it was merely superstition or fact,
whether it was a power resident in the one who looked
or a sensitiveness belonging to the one observed, when
without apparent cue or suggestion he felt a tingling
at the roots of his hair and a slow creeping through
the nerves of his shoulders. He turned with an un
wonted sensation of awe and found himself looking
into the eyes of an old man who stood in the private
doorway that led from the foyer of the theatre to
the manager's office.
Brookfield saw only the eyes.
He had a misty impression of a forehead surmount
ed by white hair. There was also the impression of
a smile tolerant and fraternal ; of a figure grace
ful and dignified. There was the sense of a second
figure at its side, but if Brookfield had been asked to
tell what he saw he would have said: "Only a pair of
eyes."
The gaze was but momentary. The old man seemed
to defer to his companion, whom Brookfield recog
nized as the most distinguished editor in the South;
and then he saw the two elderly men go back into the
manager's office.
Brookfield had the habit of excessive candor, es
pecially with himself. He had a fair capacity for self-
analysis and an absence of conceit that left him with
an accurate sense of proportion where his own quali
ties were concerned. He found himself at the mo
ment disturbed by a distinct sense of inferiority, not
to say guilt; he was puzzled to account for it. Was
6
THE WITCHING HOUR
it due to the fact that he had been apparently sur
prised in his surveillance of the party in the box?
Was it something about himself that he subconscious
ly felt the editor might impart to the stranger ? Was
it any shade of implied superiority in the tolerant
smile of the old man? As he questioned himself he
felt that it was none of these. He had been conscious
of the feeling at the moment when he first turned and
met the stranger's look and before the other considera
tions had been evolved.
Who was the man ?
Brookfield would know. He handed the borrowed
opera-glasses to the usher and tiptoed as quietly as
possible from the foyer, through the swing-to doors
of baize into the long lobby of the theatre, from which
a door opened into the manager's office at right
angles to the one in which the two old gentlemen had
stood. But his moment of introspection and hesi
tancy had cost him the desired information for the
nonce, for the two men were just crossing the side
walk at the farther end of the lobby. Brookfield fol
lowed some forty feet to the main entrance, where he
paused and watched them cross Walnut Street di
agonally to the left and enter the Pendennis Club.
The Pendennis Club at half-past ten was practically
deserted. One reason for this was the unusual op
position of a Wagner opera at Macauley's; another
reason was that the club is what the younger set
called an old man's club. The editor and his guest
peeped into the spacious and home-like library, with
its carpet of green and its furniture of mahogany and
7
THE WITCHING HOUR
Russia leather, and, as they hesitated a moment at
the door of the billiard-room, a colored boy came for
ward to take their hats.
"No," said the editor, "we are going back again.
What will you drink, Mr. Justice?"
"Is that imperative?" asked the older man.
"It is customary, sir."
"I think I will watch you." The editor gave his
order. "And, boy, bring it up-stairs the little room
where the piano is."
"Yes, sir."
The gentlemen mounted the two short flights lead
ing to the second floor, and moved forward to the lit
tle room which, in the remodelled club, has since been
thrown into the dining-hall.
"Go ahead." The Justice waved his hand easily
toward the upright piano standing at the wall. "I'd
rather hear you ramble over this key -board than
listen to that organized and pompous procession of
sound across the street."
"The dry spells are a little wearisome, but you'll
certainly like this."
Then the plump but agile and almost feminine
fingers drifted easily and sympathetically over the
keys.
When the darky boy came in with the carafe and
siphon and the clinking ice, the Justice was lean
ing back in his easy-chair and the editor was finish
ing his sympathetic approximation of the Wagner
melody. The music ceased as the boy put his tray
on the table.
"What is that?" asked the Justice.
8
THE WITCHING HOUR
"That's bourbon, sir," replied the boy, with celerity.
"I was speaking to the Colonel."
"Excuse me." The boy left him.
"That's the melody of the sextet that you would
have heard if you had taken my advice and remained
a moment longer." Then, as his thought went back
to the theatre, and the subject of their conversation
before they left it, the editor said:
"What do you want to know about Brookfield?"
"In the first place, I wish to identify him. Is
there another Brookfield in the city?"
"None that I know." Then quickly: "Except his
sister, Mrs. Campbell; they are the last members of
the family."
"The Brookfield I mean," said the Justice, "is a
man who buys pictures."
"That's Jack."
"Does he sell them?"
"Well, not as a business, but I think he is human.
Have you some pictures to sell?"
The Justice shook his head. "I understand that
Mr. Brookfield, of Louisville, bought a picture which
I had coveted for several years. I don't know that
I could buy it. When I saw it at the dealer's in
New York I felt that its price was beyond the purse
of a man in my position. Do you know Mr. Brook-
field?"
"Painfully."
"Why painfully?"
"Well, I've made some reckless contributions to
his bank account. Mr. Brookfield runs a gambling-
house."
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Oh! You mean that you would not care to com
municate with him personally?"
"I don't mean that on the contrary, I don't know
of anything that would give me greater pleasure than
a half -hour or half -day, or, for that matter, a half-year
with Jack Brookfield. There isn't a more entertain
ing man in the State. Do you wish me to see him for
you?"
"I'd like to know if he has the picture in question,
and if he would consider a reasonable offer for it."
"Why don't you see him yourself, or with me?"
"I have my reservation on the morning train for
Washington."
"See him to-night," prompted the editor.
"Is that possible?"
"We can find out, and I am almost sure it is. He
has this box-party with his sister and niece across the
street. Most probably he will take them home and
then go to his game. At any rate, we can go over
and ask him, or we can wait a half -hour and telephone
him."
"I should think telephoning the better plan," said
the Justice. "If we spoke to him now the inquiry
would have somewhat the color of a request. If his
game is open and the gentleman is doing business
when we telephone, it would be no particular hard
ship to receive a caller for a few minutes."
"Are you sure, Mr. Justice," the editor asked, with
a smile, ' ' that you would be superior to the blandish
ments of the fickle goddess if you came within ear-shot
of the chips?"
"I should be interested to see," the old jurist an-
10
THE WITCHING HOUR
swered. "I haven't made a bet on anything more
important than that little game of penny ante that
the Secretary used to have at the Shoreham since I
have been in Washington. Do you remember that
week at Chamberlain's, when Raymond was playing
at the National?"
"Perfectly. Won't you change your mind about
this?" indicating the carafe. "I mean to have an
other myself."
The Justice gave a little wave of assent, the editor
touched the push-button by the mantel, and -the talk
drifted into a field of fellowship with an atmosphere
of chance and good living and retrospection.
Brookfield paced thoughtfully the long lobby of the
old theatre. Despite the fact that his figure was what
a Louisville darky would have described as "kind
o' settled," there was about it certain marks of the
athlete. The chest was deep, the head well set on
the shoulders. When he reached the end of his beat
and started back, the turn and the first step to the
rear were propelled from the ball of the foot that had
arrested the forward motion there was no halt and
turn-tabling on the two feet. As some thought added
emphasis to his motion, there was a "boring in" with
the left shoulder that is sometimes noticeable in one
who has had reasonable practise at sparring. He took
a hand from his pocket. It wandered uneasily, but
not nervously, over his cheek and chin. The hand
was broad and long. There was vitality in the thumb
and imagination in the outer ball of the palm. It
had latent grip. The fingers tapered, but not un-
ii
THE WITCHING HOUR
pleasantly. Brookfield's face had more stren< .1 than
beauty. It might have been thought to Cairy too
much flesh if the planes of it had been >< "" 'lied.
The protuberances over the eyes were men-,, . ,. The
nose was ample in bridge and profile, sligl more
than aquiline with that spread of nostrils which
some associate with economy. The lips were full and
saved from sensuality by the length and firmness of
the upper one. The nether lip had an oratorical pout.
The eyes were full. At their outer corners the phreno
logical bump of calculation overhung and in certain
portions hid the upper lid. Below the eyes there was
an inclination to puff. The eye itself was the uncer
tain color of smoked glass. When Brookfield smiled
his eyes were almost blue; when he swore and he
swore occasionally they were quite black; but they
were always level, fearless, unwavering. The head
was round and fairly large. The ears were noticeably
low in position, indicating a capacious brain-pan. At
the base of the skull behind there was a fulness not
altogether pleasing to the sight, but, like all men
similarly endowed, its possessor had an occult and
reciprocal understanding of all dumb animals.
As Brookfield paced back and forth he endeavored
to get his mind away from the stranger who had so
singularly attracted him and the old lobby was po
tent with suggestion. Except for an occasional single
picture here and there, which he recognized as recent
additions, its walls closely and irregularly covered
with faded and fading photographs, were as he re
membered them to have been for the past twenty
years. Favorites of the theatre-going public of the
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THE WITCHING HOUR
John Owens and the elder Davenport were
repi^ented there; Goodwin, juvenile and sleek and
s ]i .1- -s Brookfield remembered him in the early
da^ 'no'/iis popularity; Joe Emmett, another helpful
pat- ,-pf Brookfield's establishment ; John Raymond,
with whom, when it had been necessary to leave the
table for the theatre, he had repaired to the old
actor's dressing-room and continued the contest by
matching silver dollars during waits. These and hun
dreds of others gazed at him with the well-remem
bered looks of early friends.
There was a patter of metallic taps on the tiles
behind him. Brookfield turned to meet a shaggy,
rheumatic and over-fed dog, half Irish terrier and half
bull. The dog wagged his stumpy tail and turned
over on his back, all four paws in the air, at Brook-
field's feet. Brookfield understood the request, and
as he scratched the shaggy belly with the toe of his
pump he said, "Where's your master, Bert where is
he?" Bert interpreted the remark to be a request
for his opinion upon the character of the massage, so
he wriggled electrically and smiled dog fashion. Know
ing that the manager of the theatre was not far off
when the dog was in the lobby, Brookfield moved back
toward the private office. The dog preceded him and
stood expectantly at the second door, which was the
one leading into the theatre. Brookfield opened it;
the dog went into the auditorium, as was his undis
puted privilege, and Brookfield followed. Bert pat
tered down the side aisle and into the proscenium-
box, by which Brookfield knew that the manager was
probably on the stage. He desisted, therefore, from
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THE WITCHING HOUR
his purpose in following the dog, especially as his
knowledge of the opera reminded him that it was
nearing the final curtain. He stood looking over the
audience.
The distinctive charm of Macauley's Theatre is its
somewhat antiquated model : a wide and shallow par
quet floor surrounded by a dress-circle, dish-shaped,
the rise a little more acute than that favored by
modern architecture, but making it possible for every
one in the theatre to see everybody else, and giving
to it that feeling of intimacy and homelikeness so dear
to the Southern heart. Except for a few purchasers
who had drifted in from the hotels the small percent
age of transient visitors the ground-floor members
of the audience of this night were almost a family.
It was an assemblage melancholy for Brookfield in
its suggestion. His business made him the intimate
and confidant of many of the men present, who had
passed him with slight recognition in the intermis
sions. His profession had estranged him from many
of the families represented, in whose homes he had
been a welcome visitor two-and- twenty years before.
His position, as he stood there alone at the rear of
the foyer, symbolized his social isolation.
Brookfield was not made for self-pity, but there
came upon him to-night an overwhelming sense of the
distress which his perverse course had brought upon
those dearest to him. He looked toward the box in
which, as he could see by Ellinger's pose, the old
sport was scratching the manager's dog, more inter
ested in the animal than in the opera. He felt a keen
remorse that, aside from the boy, whose record was
14
THE WITCHING HOUR
yet to be made, the only escorts he had been able to
provide for his sister and his niece had been this old
card-player, Lew Ellinger, and Hardmuth, the sinister
attorney, whose attentions to Viola had evidently
been distasteful. He felt an equally keen regret when
he considered the boy, a talented and promising young
architect just turned twenty, and reflected that but
for the blighting profession to which he had himself
been so devoted, he might now be the father of such
a boy and the husband of the woman, serene and
stately, whom the boy called mother.
The finale of the opera rang out in vocal volume
and flared through brass and reed, stirring in Brook-
field a little of that militant resolve which sometimes
rises Phcenixlike from the flame of remorse. There
was the agitato of the conductor's baton, the sudden
roll of the timbrels, the long note of principals and
chorus, and the drop-curtain fell, displaying its wood
ed scene of grazing sheep and watching shepherd,
lake and distant hills. The great sunburst in the
dome shone out, the audience fluttered to its feet.
Brookfield, undecided and irresolute, passed through
the lobby, with its faded photographs, to the side
walk, and signalled for his automobile.
II
THE dining-room at Jack Brookfield's was nearly
square in form, and larger than most city din
ing-rooms even in a land of generous domestic archi
tecture.
One side of the room was half filled by a stately
mantel -piece, not too floridly carved, of old marble
brought from an Italian palace. A man of Brook-
field's height, by stooping, could walk into the fire
place ; the average girl, like Viola, for instance, might
stand erect in it. Over the mantel and reaching to
the ceiling there was the picture of a moonlit sea
built into the trim. Near this a dependent cross-
timber of the ceiling hid the electric lamps, whose
rays fell upon painted sky and water with luminous
brilliance and by their reflection gave to the room the
mellowed light which was its only illumination.
Brookfield had left orders for the supper, and when
the party arrived from the theatre the plates were laid
for the expected guests; each plate, with its flanking
outriders of silver and ivory and glass, picked out
from the dull mahogany with its individual square of
Belgium lace. On the rich centrepiece of the same
material lay a modest bank of red roses.
In any department of taste Brookfield was either
too sensitive or too well informed to offend by any
16
THE WITCHING HOUR
sign of ostentation. The flowers were just enough;
the glassware promised only Apollinaris and cham
pagne; the forks prophesied a simple and digestible
supply. Old Harvey, Brookfield's colored pantry
man and nocturnal chef, stood by, a smiling guarantor
of culinary excellence.
As the four men waited the arrival of the ladies in
the library during that moment of unavoidable delay
which always occurs on such occasions, Lew Ellinger
found time to leave them and join Harvey in the din
ing-room. A stranger uninformed of the unblendable
property of the color-line South of the Ohio might have
fallen into the error of supposing that Ellinger and Har
vey belonged to the same brotherhood. No word was
spoken, but as the old bon vivant lifted his left hand,
with the first two ringers slightly crooked and the
thumb at a sufficient elevation, Harvey said, "Yes,
suh; yes, suh," twice, and then again in mystic and
lulling repetition as he handed Lew a Liliputian
tumbler and a decanter without the stopper. As
Ellinger poured the dark, red fluid into the glass
with the measured accuracy of a practised pharmacian
watching his graduate, he said:
"You may put this bottle right in front of me at
the supper-table, Harvey."
"Yes, suh."
"I've quit flirting with that giddy stuff years ago."
"Yes, suh."
Whether it was the recollection of this permanent
and enforced separation or his failure to take the glass
of water which Harvey handed him, there came into
Ellinger's eyes a gentle moisture. He removed it
17
THE WITCHING HOUR
with a needlessly sheer handkerchief which he
found in his left cuff after a fluttering search else
where.
Ellinger heard himself inquired for in the next
room. There was the hum of women's voices min
gling with the deeper tones of the men, and he had
just time to meet the party at the doorway. With
a facile mendacity that deceived nobody, Lew
said:
"I've inspected everything, Jack, and it's perfect.
Ladies, we are to be congratulated."
"What a beautiful room!" Helen exclaimed, as they
entered the dining-room.
Brookfield deferred the compliment to her son.
' ' Yours ? ' ' Mrs. Whipple exclaimed, afresh . ' ' Why,
Clay, dear!"
"There's one somewhat like it in a chateau in
Tours," the boy confessed; "it's pretty hard, mother,
to be entirely original." Then Jack came to his as
sistance.
"Clay's problem here was to follow his Touraine
model, without the height of the original, and not
have the room seem squat. I think he answered it
by the refinement and number of the cross-beams;
but however he did it he answered it satisfactorily,
and that's sufficient success for a broiler."
Hardmuth's laugh, which he offered as a recognition
of Jack's pleasantry, was a too rasping enforcement
of it, and turned an intended compliment into seem
ing criticism. Clay frowned petulantly, but Brook-
field, with a counterpointing tact which was a marked
possession of his, continued :
18
THE WITCHING HOUR
"And I'm going to put the distinguished architect
on my right."
"Not Helen?" his sister inquired.
"I want Helen where I can look at her." And
Brookfield cast an explanatory glance toward the
boy that would have revealed the situation to a
mother much less intuitive than Helen Whipple, who
already divined the rivalry between Hardmuth and
her son and was grateful for Jack's sympathy.
"We're seven, aren't we?" Jack hurried on.
"We are seven," Lew recited, in labored repeti
tion, with mildly literary enjoyment of possible quo
tation.
"And seven into sixty goes eight times and a half,"
Brookfield said, indicating the outline of the round
table as he drew out his watch.
"Into sixty?" Mrs. Campbell asked. She always
needed a guidebook when conversing with her brother,
who was wont to tease her. Ignoring her question, he
fixed his look on the dial over which his thumb picked
out the points.
"Assume that I'm standing at twelve o'clock, Clay
will sit eight minutes to my right, you will be two
minutes of two, dear Alice, and Mr. Ellinger will be
three - three. Helen, will you take that chair near
five o'clock? Mr. Hardmuth will sit at seven, and
that leaves Viola between Mr. Hardmuth and Clay,
at about two minutes of nine."
' ' Well, what do you think of that ?" Ellinger beamed,
in mediocre admiration, as he found his chair between
the two older women. "Isn't that just like him?"
Helen remembered that it was.
19
THE WITCHING HOUR
"As like him as two peas," Ellinger rambled on,
inconsequently. "Jack turns everything into a dia
gram. I saw him draw an after-dinner speech once
on a table-cloth. Yes, sir draw it, and it was a
blamed good speech but to look at it reminded me
of a dog's pedigree exactly."
Helen would have understood the diagram quite
as clearly as she understood Lew's similes, but she
recalled without assistance that sculptor-like quality
in Jack of mentally seeing all things, tangible or in
tangible, in geometric plan.
"This affectation of density concerning the place
of honor doesn't deceive you and me, Miss Viola, does
it?" Hardmuth asked, as they sat down. "We know
it's to the right of the lady."
"Uncle Jack selected Mrs. Whipple as the lady to
sit opposite him, and Mr. Ellinger's at her right," she
replied.
"There's no lady opposite me, Viola," her uncle
corrected; "our disposition of seven leaves that a
vacant spot, as you see. It symbolizes the tragedy
of a bachelor's life."
"He means one of the tragedies," Ellinger stage-
whispered to Helen, in mock consolation.
"Exactly," added Hardmuth, from her left. "That
tragedy pose of Mr. Brookfield's is what men in my
business call an 'alibi.'"
"And may I ask, Mr. Hardmuth, what men in
your business do?"
"Men in his business are the awful prosecuting at
torneys of this country," Ellinger answered, warn-
ingly.
20
THE WITCHING HOUR
'You see the beauty of my method, Mrs. Whipple,"
Jack remarked, sagely. "Seating you between Mr.
Hardmuth and a questionable person like Mr. Ellinger
is what I call ' tempering justice w r ith mercy. ' '
"Do you understand what they're talking about?"
Viola's mother asked, helplessly.
"I try not to," Helen answered, smiling at Jack's
metaphor.
"Here's something, my dear sister, really addressed
to your comprehension." And Brookfield indicated
the cup Harvey had just put on Mrs. Campbell's
plate.
"I think it's gumbo," Ellinger whispered to Helen
"chicken gumbo strained this old darky beats the
world at it just enough of everything taste it
see ? Notice how you get the chicken and the celery
and the pepper and the gumbo and the salt and the
consomme^ each one answerin' like a roll-call in a
bible-class ain't it perfect?"
Ellinger's voice seemed to fit in with the half-light
of the room, the old finish of the furniture, and the
ivory tint of the doilies. It was the voice of a vin
tage a voice that could have issued only from that
genial, ruddy face whose permeating good-nature was
the compensation, and perhaps the product, of its
dulness. Helen remembered Lew Ellinger in his
early forties, more than twenty years before, when
the hair, now white, carried only a tinge of gray at
the temples and the short mustache was black. She
remembered his clothes. That had been an epoch of
wide braid and silk facings in men's wardrobes. She
remembered being told that it was a point of pride
21
THE WITCHING HOUR
with Lew never to be seen without a fresh pink in his
button-hole. He was wearing a pink to-night. The
voice had been mellow in those days. It was now al
most demoralizing in its suggestion of creature com
forts, in its muffled, oily, and smoky familiarity.
Helen recalled Ellinger's reputation of that olden
time "a perfect gentleman, reliably punctilious in
all circumstances as long as a lady did not forget
herself" despite which reassurement from the pass
ing biographer grandma had not permitted mother
to go driving with Mr. Ellinger. And here he was to
night, smiling to Helen herself in quite disappointing
harmlessness, his glowing face with its keen little
eyes of blue presenting all the colors of an American
flag.
Through the mist of her "wandering attention Helen
retrieved his voice and laid hold again of its message.
" And then he varnishes the inside of the tomato
with hot paraffin, lets it cool, and puts the ice-cream
and the muskmelon inside of it," Ellinger was saying.
Was he still talking of Harvey ?
"And how long have you known him, Mr. Ellinger ?"
Helen reconnoitred.
"Why, he cooked for Jack's father."
Harvey, of course.
"Doesn't it seem good to you, Mrs. Whipple, to
get back to Kentucky and some real cooking?"
"It's wonderfully restful to be in the old home
again."
"But the cooking?" Ellinger pleaded.
"Philadelphia has some pride in that field."
"I know it," Ellinger admitted. "I remember eat-
22
THE WITCHING HOUR
ing my first oyster-crabs Newburg in a little red-brick
hotel the old Belleville."
"Bellevue," Helen corrected.
"I meant Bellevue." And once more Lew's mem
ory led him to revel in the description of a menu,
this time the one that had framed the hallowed baby
crabs.
A term of special succulent stress caught the ear of
Mrs. Campbell, Lew's other neighbor, and drew from
her an inquiry. Mrs. Campbell's sympathy with the
gastronomic tastes of the old sport was less feigned
than Helen's, and Lew lived again the joy of the con
noisseur over the phantom banquet he spread for
her imagination in the vanished room of the famous
old hostelry.
Through the courses of terrapin and plover, as
Harvey served them, Ellinger talked with the fluency
of the amateur, sometimes to one, more frequently
to six, his throaty tones caressingly lubricating his
theme, and convincing almost the least sanguinary
that the bonne bouche of this repast was the brain of
the plover. This was secured, Lew explained, by
holding the plover's severed head by its bill and nip
ping one's front teeth through the paper-shell skull.
His illustration of this incisive process, and the
luscious though scarcely audible inhalation that was
an unavoidable part of it, sent little shivers over
Viola's shoulders. Ellinger, temporarily estopped of
speech, pointed to the girl's face, tensely awry in
mimetic contemplation of his own, and the general
laugh released her from her auto-hypnosis.
Aside from their occasional attention to such com-
23
THE WITCHING HOUR
pelling demonstrations as this, Helen found her
thoughts rambling leisurely. Hardmuth was notice
ably engrossed in Viola, and his perfunctory asides
to herself marked only the moments of general com
ment.
How unlike this table-talk had been that which
Helen Whipple had known during the past twenty
years! There came into her mental vision in easy
and blending succession pictures of the breakfast
and dinner table, of the little dining-room in the
red-brick, rectangular dwelling at Germantown, in
which she and Dr. Whipple had lived during the
early years of their marriage; of her lonely vigils
there as the doctor's increasing practice in the city
called him from the pleasant suburb; Clay's nur
sery years, when the breakfast had been devoted
to the doctor's morning paper and to her care of
the china within reach of the infant missiles; then
the staid and formal house in Philadelphia into
which came the reflected anxiety of the busy physi
cian, the domestic communion unhappily abridged by
his professional programme and interrupted by calls
telephonic and personal. Only the sober, the serious,
the dutiful side of living a long, prosaic period of
unmitigated strain and stress.
Looking across the table at Jack, what a contrast
she found in his amiable and expressive countenance
to the tense and severe visage of her late husband!
Brookfield's face was very different from the same
face, as she remembered it, in its early manhood, and
yet the difference was one for which she had been
not unprepared. As she realized how often in the in-
24
THE WITCHING HOUR
tervening time she had permitted her mind to dwell
upon this earlier suitor she felt a self-accusing sense
of disloyalty to the father of the boy now sitting at
his right. She was startled to find that her feeling of
ease and relaxation in her present situation was due
not entirely to either the absence of domestic care or
the regained associations of her girlhood. Much of
the purring comfort of her position was caused by the
proximity of this powerful man, who had somehow
and without communication never been quite absent
from the penumbra of her thought. What compan
ionship there was now in his very glance!
Brookfield himself, almost silent between his sister,
who was analyzing recipes with Ellinger on one side,
and Helen's boy, who was hovering a youthful pro
tectorate over Viola on the other side, found amuse
ment in telegraphing to Helen a mental comment
upon it all. Under that heavy and apparently phleg
matic mask Helen could see the play of his thoughts
like summer lightning behind an evening cloud-bank
the veriest ghost of a smile from one corner of the
mouth, the slightest drooping of an eyelid at some
banality, a suggestive uplift of eyebrow doing service
for inquiry, an indescribable accent of glance that
conveyed assent.
Helen's quiet enjoyment of the implicit communica
tion was interrupted by her sudden recognition of and
astonishment at the fact that Brookfield's facial play
was a running commentary upon her own inmost
thought, and then, as she felt herself flushing beneath
this consciousness, there was just a noticeable com
pression of Brookfield's lips in the reassuring audacity
25
THE WITCHING HOUR
of a phantom caress, after which, in more overt com
munication, he lifted his glass and smilingly, though
silently, drank to her.
This last act caught the attention of Ellinger, ever
watchful for any legitimate excuse, and he roughly
led the chorus which voiced less intimately Brook-
field's sentiment:
"To our fair and honored guest."
Shortly afterward, when the party had again scat
tered its attention, Helen found Jack's eyes saying:
"Wouldn't this have been much better, after all
this cosiness, this intimacy, tranquillity, and warmth ?
Wasn't it all a vanity, a vexation of spirit : the years
of strident effort in the aggressive charities, the so
cieties for civic betterment, and all the altruistic,
self-appointed turmoil since we parted?" Again
Brookfield lifted his glass as Helen's look of waver
ing indecision seemed to him confession.
There was a second observation by Ellinger and a
general laugh following some pleasantry of his at
Brookfield's expense.
Jo, the colored hall-boy in Brookfield's establish
ment, appeared in the doorway leading from the li
brary.
"Yes?" inquired Brookfield.
"Mr. Denning, suh," said Jo.
Brookfield begged the company to excuse him a
moment, then rose from the table and followed Jo.
Ill
WELL, Jo ?" Brookfield looked at the negro boy
a bit impatiently. On those rare occasions
when the house was dark, Jo was endowed with suf
ficient vicarious discretion to turn most any applicant
away.
"Mr. Denning, suh," Jo repeated, with slightly jus
tifying emphasis.
Brookfield hesitated, and then: "Ask Mr. Denning
to come up," he said.
"Yes, suh." The boy left on his errand.
Brookfield moved a few steps after the boy, as if
with the intent to revoke his order; and then as a
more definite plan occurred to him he called to the
group about the supper-table:
"Lew I say, Lew! Won't you ladies excuse Mr.
Ellinger a moment?"
A chorus of assent, not necessarily uncompliment
ary, came in reply, and Ellinger joined Brookfield.
"Want to see me?"
Brookfield took Lew by the elbow and led him a
few steps from the doorway and beyond the line of
vision of his guests.
"Tom Denning's here he expects a game. My
sister and Mrs. Whipple object to the pasteboards,
so don't mention it before them."
3 27
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Not a word," answered the discreet old sport;
"but Tom" he nodded toward the hall door
"what of him?"
"I'll attend to Tom," said Brookfield; "you re
join the ladies."
"Good."
As Lew regained the doorway of the dining-room
Denning entered from the hallway.
"Hello, Lew!" called the new-comer.
Ellinger paused in helpless embarrassment between
his duty and this convivial interruption.
"Go on," said Brookfield, imperatively, and Lew
obeyed.
Denning, astonished at the sight of Ellinger in
evening attire and by the formal front of the pro
prietor, said:
"What have you got to-night young Rockefeller?"
"Some ladies " Brookfield started to explain,
and paused, frowning, interrupted by the leer on Den-
ning's face. And then he added, "My sister and her
daughter and a lady friend of hers." There was a
rebuke in the measured authority of the utterance.
"No game?" Denning asked, disappointedly.
"Not until they go."
The young man, who had changed his position so
as to catch a glimpse of the group in the next room,
exclaimed with that sudden alteration of mood char
acteristic of the immature mind in the presence of
new toys:
"Oh, chafing-dish!"
"They've been to the opera, and I had Harvey
brew them some terrapin."
28
THE WITCHING HOUR
"My luck," Denning complained.
"No, I think there's some left," Brookfield con
soled; and as an expression of relief passed over
Denning's countenance, Jack felt a sense of shame
that his victims held among their number one so
simple as the man before him. Denning was an ex
ample of a type numerically increasing that waste
ful intermediate generation between shirt-sleeves and
shirt-sleeves; the pampered son of a father apochry-
phally opulent. The class to which he belonged had
not yet arrived at the distinction of imperial denuncia
tion, and Tom was an only child ; but had there been
a sister the family could have been reconciled to seeing
her a foreign princess.
As Brookfield regarded his guest there passed vague
ly before his mind a picture of the scheme of things so
fashioned that by a law of nature it seemed one
species should feed upon and devour another. Then,
in quick realization of his own inability to revise that
law in the time now at his disposal, he added, in an
easy, patronizing protection:
"I'm going to take a long chance, Tom, and intro
duce you to these ladies, only I want you not to say
anything before them about poker or any other
game."
Denning protested. "Why, I thought you said
your sister "
"I did," Brookfield replied, his tone slightly hostile.
"Well, she's on, isn't she?"
Brookfield nodded. "But she doesn't like it, and
my niece my niece doesn't like it."
There was something in Brookfield's repetition of
29
THE WITCHING HOUR
"my niece" that caused Denning to stand at atten
tion. If his early schooling had been received in a
military academy he would have saluted. During the
pause that followed old Harvey entered.
"I'se made some coffee, Marse Jack; will you have
it in the dining-room or here, suh?"
"Ill ask the ladies."
"How are you, Harvey?" Denning grinned at the
old servant.
"Marse Denning."
"You've got some terrapin left for Mr. Denning,
Harvey?" Brookfield asked, as he passed from the
room.
"Yes, suh," Harvey answered; then again, to Den
ning, "Yes, suh."
"They left some of the rum, I hope ?" said Denning.
The old darky laughed.
"Couldn't empty my ice-box in one evening, Marse
Denning." And then, with a sudden change of man
ner, as he looked toward the dining-room, he added,
deferentially, "The ladies gettin' up, suh."
Brookfield returned.
"Harvey."
"Yes, suh."
"The ladies will have their coffee in here."
"Yes, suh."
As the ladies were already following, Brookfield
crossed, warningly, to Denning and introduced him.
"Alice, this is my friend Mr. Denning my sister
Mrs. Campbell."
Alice nodded to the young man now awkwardly
conscious of his tweeds.
3
THE WITCHING HOUR
Helen was saying to Viola, about whom she had
put her arm, "I never take coffee even after dinner,
and at this hour never."
Jack finished his introduction of Denning, and, re
solved that there should be no misleading opportunity
for impolitic commonplace, he took the young man
by the arm and led him toward the dining-room, say
ing as they went:
"Mr. Denning 's just left the foundry, and he is very
hungry."
"And thirsty," Denning added, with prompt seiz
ure of the chance.
"Yes, and thirsty," Jack courageously accepted.
"Uncle Harvey is going to save his life." And with
dissembling heartiness he pushed Denning from the
room.
"The foundry?" Alice inquired, with characteristic
naivete 1 .
"Never did a day's work in his life," Jack smiled.
"Why, that's Tom Denning."
"Tom Denning is the name of the big race-horse,"
Viola volunteered, from one of her fields of special
information.
"Yes," answered Jack, "this fellow is named after
the race-horse."
"What does he do?" asked Helen.
"His father." Brookfield explained: "Father's in
the packing business in Kansas City this fellow has
four men shovelling money away from him so he can
breathe."
"Oh, Jack!" Alice exclaimed, in amused protest.
"Yes," insisted Jack, "I'm one of them." Then,
31
THE WITCHING HOUR
in quick recovery from this inadvertent admission of
his trade, he added, as he paused on the threshold,
"You'll find cigarettes in that box."
"Jack!" Mrs. Campbell rose from her chair with
that extravagance of self-defence sometimes so peril
ously near confession.
"Not you, Alice dear," said Jack, with apologetic
stress almost equally disclosing.
"Well, certainly not for me, Uncle Jack," Viola
answered, honestly, as he looked toward her and Helen.
"Of course, not you, dear."
"Thank you, Mr. Brookfield," Helen deduced, in a
fraternal pleasantness which Jack remembered so well.
Mrs. Campbell, as usual, one step behind the mental
procession whenever it departed from the heaviest
marching order, came to the defence of their guest.
"My dear brother, you confuse the Kentucky ladies
with some of your Eastern friends."
"Careful, Alice, careful. Helen lived in the East
twenty years, remember."
"But even my husband didn't smoke."
"No?"
"Never in his life."
"In his life," Jack repeated, with malicious an
alysis. "Why make such a pessimistic distinction?"
"Jack!" his sister gasped again, in fluttering ex
postulation; and then, as she came to him, murmured
plaintively in an audible undertone, "How can you
say a thing like that?"
"She's the man's widow," Brookfield offered, in
sympathetic opacity to Alice. "I've got to say it if
any one does."
THE WITCHING HOUR
Harvey turned the trend of conversation by his ap
pearance with the tray of coffee.
"Mr. Denning got his tortoise, has he, Uncle Har
vey?"
"He's got the same as we all had, Marse Jack; yes,
suh." The old darky chuckled.
"I'll take it, Uncle Harvey." Jack referred to the
cup that Helen had declined. "I think three or four
of them might help this head of mine."
Brookfield had confessed once or twice earlier in
the evening to a headache, and his sister now said
to him, with an inflection that indicated a repeated
offer:
"Why don't you let Viola cure vour head
ache?" "
"Yes, Uncle Jack, do." Viola put down her cup
as she spoke.
"No, the coffee will fix it, I'm sure."
"Sit here while you drink it." Viola pushed an
easy-chair from the end of the table.
"No, no, Viola; it isn't bad enough for that. I'll
conserve your mesmeric endowment for a real occa
sion."
Brookfield took the contents of the demi-tasse at a
swallow.
"Just to please me," his niece persisted.
Jack touched her caressingly under the chin, and,
shaking his finger in concentrated accusation, lost
upon all his hearers excepting Helen, said, "I don't
want to spoil your awful stories."
Brookfield rejoined the gentlemen in the dining-
room, where Harvey was passing the cigars.
33
THE WITCHING HOUR
Left to themselves, the ladies began to evince that
personal disposition toward ease which marks the
absence of self-consciousness, even self-consciousness
so slight as that invited by the presence of the most
intimate male relative.
Viola curled into one corner of the old colonial
sofa that raked diagonally from the fireplace. She
had taken from the table an uncut magazine and a
huge tusk of ivory, shaped at its broader end into a
spatulate paper-cutter. Her mother sought an easy-
chair, regretfully expostulating that she had read
somewhere that it was wise to stay on one's feet for
twenty minutes after each meal. Helen leaned on
the back of another chair in restful contemplation of
the room which she had seen but hurriedly in her
first passage through it before the supper. She was
as yet unable to decide which object or group of ob
jects gave it that quality of witchery of which she
was becoming conscious. Perhaps it was not the
room itself; rather it might be the room in combina
tion with the owner, of whose uncanny power and in
definite quality she was singularly aware. In the
moment her mind had moved on its circle about this
central idea, and by a double association the question
seemed to utter itself:
"Is Viola a magnetic healer, too?"
"Oh no," Viola said, quickly, although the ques
tion had been put to her mother.
"Yes a remarkable one," the mother replied.
"Only headaches, Mrs. Whipple," the girl ex
plained, "and those I crush out of my victims."
"I remember Jack used to have a wonderful
34
THE WITCHING HOUR
ability in that way as a young man," Helen
said.
Viola smiled in pretty insinuation. "Uncle Jack
says only with girls."
"We know better, don't we?" Alice remarked,
stolidly, to Helen. Their guest nodded, and Viola
resumed :
"Well, for myself, I'd rather have Uncle Jack sit
by me than any regular physician I ever saw."
"You mean if you were ill?" said Helen.
"Of course."
"You must be very clear with Mrs. Whipple on
that point, Viola," said Mrs. Campbell, whose mental
baggage- train was beginning to arrive, "because she
used to prefer your uncle Jack to sit by her even
when she wasn't ill." And the lady smiled, blandly
unconscious that Viola had implied as much some
minutes earlier.
"But especially when ill, my dear," Helen ad
mitted; and then, inquiringly, to his sister, "Has
Jack quit it?"
"Yes; you know Jack went into politics for a
while."
"Did he?"
"Yes local politics something about the police
didn't please him then he quit all curative work."
"Why?"
"Well, in politics I believe there is something un
pleasant about the word 'healer.' ' This unpleasant
condition had never been quite clear to Mrs. Campbell.
"Entirely different spelling," Viola suggested.
Mrs. Campbell continued : "The papers joked about
35
THE WITCHING HOUR
his magnetic touch. It seems that the word 'touch'
is also used offensively, so Jack dropped the whole
business."
"And Viola inherits this magnetic power?" said
Helen.
"If one can inherit power from an uncle," Mrs.
Campbell answered. On these matters of genealogy
she was particularly lucid. Besides, Kentucky had
given more than proportionate attention to the in
tricate questions of breeding.
"Let us say from a family," enlarged Helen.
"That is even more generous," Mrs. Campbell an
swered, more wisely than she knew. "But Viola is
like her uncle Jack in svery way that a girl may re
semble a man horses and boats and every kind of
personal risk."
"I'm proud of it," Viola boasted, parenthetically.
"And Jack spoils her."
"Am I spoiled?" Viola appealed to Mrs. Whipple.
Helen's smile was more comforting than the spoken
word of most women.
"But I will say he couldn't love her more if he
were her own father," Alice added.
Helen found this report of the paternal quality in
Jack strangely grateful. She pressed against her
cheek the hand that Viola had given her. That Jack
loved the girl in such degree doubled the growing
affection for her which Clay's interest and the girl's
own attractiveness had planted in Helen's heart, so
sensitively maternal.
Despite the fact that Viola in every feature was
noticeably unlike her uncle, there was, nevertheless,
36
THE WITCHING HOUR
in the general relation of the features that evanescent
something which we call family resemblance. Under
the smooth contour of her decidedly classical face
there was manifestly the same modelling that under
lay Jack's grim mask. That family trick of level
glance which was domination in the uncle was sim
ple sincerity in the girl. The vibrant arch of nostril
and the fulness of the lip, so dangerously suggestive
of the sensual in the man, spelled only poetry and
affection in the finer feminine face. Viola was typi
cally and beautifully blond not of the anaemic and
bloodless type, but of that Olympian variety which
Oliver Wendell Holmes described as "shot through
and through with amber light."
As Helen pressed the girl's hand she noticed in its
palm a vital prehension eminently kindred to Jack's
touch. Observing persons had frequently remarked
this quality in Brookfield's hand. Independent of the
grip of muscle, the palm itself seemed to have some
moist and individual power of cohesion a quality of
friendliness and health and magnetism. Helen was
no student of character, but the feminine sense of in
tuition was hers in a marked degree, and it did not
fail her now. She knew indubitably that the girl be
side her was gifted with the rare capacity of abiding
loyalty. She apprehended in some inexplicable way
that the girl was to be for her an ally in her protective
interest in Clay, who, seizing the first chance to quit
the men in the other room, had just joined the ladies.
"Isn't this a jolly room, mother?" said the young
architect, indicating by a sweep of his hand the hos
pitable walls of the library.
37
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Beautiful!"
"Sleeping -apartments are what I take pride in,
though," Clay continued, as he nodded upward; "a
private bath to every bedroom, reading-lamps just
over the pillows, individual telephones to the kitchen."
"Haven't you seen the house, Mrs. Whipple ?" Viola
interrupted.
"Not above this floor."
"Would it interest you?" Mrs. Campbell asked,
mildly, and then recollecting, she added, apologeti
cally, "Why, what a foolish question as though any
thing your boy had done could fail to interest you!"
Mrs. Campbell crossed to the dining-room and called
her brother. As Jack responded she turned to Helen,
and in a manner that implied an opportunity for
choice said, "Will I do as your guide?"
"Certainly," said Mrs. Whipple.
"Well?" said Brookfield.
"I want to show Helen over the house," his sister
explained.
"Very well, do it."
"The rooms are empty?"
"Empty? Of course," Jack replied, in mock re
sentment.
"Don't be too indignant, my dear brother; they
are not always empty." And then as she turned to
Helen she explained, "In Jack's house one is liable to
find a belated pilgrim in any room."
Helen, conscious of the playfulness which the sister
missed beneath Jack's look, ventured, with contrib
uting banter, "And a lady walking in unannounced
would be something of a surprise, wouldn't she?"
38
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Well," answered Jack, in grave deliberation, "two
ladies would certainly, and
"Jack!" interrupted Alice.
"My dear sister, they would," Brookfield protested,
in injured innocence; and then, appealing to Helen,
"Hard lines when the reputation of a man's house
isn't respected by his own sister huh!" He stormed
back to the dining-room, leaving his sister in a haze
of perturbation.
"The same Jack," said Helen, singularly unhor-
rified.
"The same," Alice assented, "only sometimes I
think confirmed in his peculiarities."
Viola declined her mother's invitation to accom
pany them over the upper part of the house, and the
two older ladies departed, leaving Clay and her to
gether.
IV
MRS. WHIPPLE'S anxiety concerning her boy was
not without foundation. There were certain
weaknesses in his character that justified her desire for
sympathy and assistance in her necessarily waning
care of him. She believed that his artistic tempera
ment, and many of the weaknesses supposed to ac
company such a temperament, he had inherited from
herself. There was a noticeable strain of his father,
however, which she detected in the boy's ready and
almost fanatical advocacy of any hopeless cause that
made its appeal to the humanities. He was emo
tional; unquestionably much of Clay's decorative
talent could be attributed to this fact, but his
greatest danger also lay there. All his life he had
been subject to a kind of intellectual vertigo, at
times approaching perilously to irresponsibility.
As a boy of ten he had leaped into the Schuylkill
to save a playmate from drowning. Unable himself
to swim a stroke, he had only doubled the task of the
competent rescuers. At twelve, when an itinerant ex-
horter was calling the guilty to repentance, and be
moaning the fact that in all his audience of sinners
none had the courage to lead the penitent to the
altar, Clay had unhesitatingly accepted the call and
been the first to the bench. At sixteen, after a baf-
40
THE WITCHING HOUR
fling absence of four days, he was discovered in Tampa,
whither he had fled with a regiment of Pennsylvania
volunteers in an almost inflexible resolution to avenge
the destruction of the Maine.
He was peculiarly amenable to suggestion, to ap
proval, to rebuke. These qualities, while they caused
the boy uncountable suffering, also won for him many
friends. The firm of distinguished architects with
which Brookfield's invited influence had been able to
place him was already finding his temperament a
considerable asset in its professional relations with
women clients. Clay had an almost feminine inter
est in the detail of decoration he had an eye for form
and color. That he should fall in love with the beau
tiful niece- of Brookfield was an inevitable conse
quence of his association with her.
Left alone with Viola, Clay turned to her with char
acteristic impulsiveness and said:
"What was Frank Hardmuth saying to you?"
"When?" asked the girl, with that Fabian evasion
which is the heritage of the sex.
"At supper and in the box at the theatre, too."
"Oh, Frank Hardmuth," she pouted, playfully;
"nobody pays any attention to him."
"I thought you paid a good deal of attention to
what he was saying."
"In the same theatre-party a girl's got to listen or
leave the box."
"Some persons listen to the opera."
"I told him that was what I wanted to do."
"Was he making love to you, Viola?"
"I shouldn't call it that."
41
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Would anybody else have called it that if they
had overheard it?" Clay persisted.
"I don't think so."
"Won't you tell me what it was about?"
Viola waited. There is something so personal in
every declaration of love, implied or direct, compli
mentary or questionable, that a woman instinctively
guards it, not necessarily as sacred, but with an in
herent sentimental economy.
Viola was unpractised but not unequipped.
"I don't see why you ask?" she ventured, diplo
matically, beginning to feel the strain of Clay's si
lence.
"I ask," the boy said, promptly, "because he seem
ed so much in earnest, and because you seemed so
much in earnest."
"Well?" questioned Viola, still non-committal.
"Frank Hardmuth's a fellow that will stand watch
ing." Clay glared into the dining-room where the ob
ject of his jealousy was seated.
"He stood a good deal to-night," Viola laughed,
with a wish to introduce a playfulness into the col
loquy.
"I mean," Clay continued, still serious, "that he
is a clever lawyer, and would succeed in making a
girl commit herself in some way to him before she
knew it."
"I think that depends more on the way the girl
feels." Viola rose and crossed the room with an in
stinct of drawing the boy's attention from Hardmuth.
There was an implied assurance in the speech as Clay
interpreted it, and, somewiiat mollified, he followed her.
42
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Well, I don't want you to listen to Frank Hard-
muth under the impression that he's the only chance
in Kentucky."
"Why, Clay Whipple!" Viola's severity was a re
sentment of the implication that she had regarded
Hardmuth as a chance at all, and was not an at
tempted discouragement of the impending declara
tion.
"You know very well I've been courting you my
self, Viola, don't you?"
"You haven't," the girl replied, smiling in frank
admiration of his directness; "you've just been com
ing around like a big boy."
"Have I gone with any other girl anywhere?"
"I don't know."
"And I've spoken to your uncle Jack about it,"
Clay continued.
"To Uncle Jack?"
"Yes."
"Nobody told you to speak to Uncle Jack."
"Mother did."
4 ' Your mother ? ' ' Viola asked . The increasing num
ber of Clay's advisers gave the question a disturbing
importance.
"Yes," answered the young suitor; "mother's got
regular old-fashioned ideas about boys and young
ladies, and she says, ' If you think Viola likes you, the
honorable thing is to speak to her guardian."
"Oh, you thought that, did you?" Viola was as
piqued by the secure assumption as she was compli
mented by its persistency. But her tone only gave
determination to the boy.
43
THE WITCHING HOUR
"I certainly did," he answered.
"I can't imagine why."
"I thought that because you're Jack Brookfield's
niece, and nobody of his blood would play a game
that isn't fair."
No phrase could have been more unfortunately
chosen. Clay had meant to apply only the college
boy's standard of fair play in athletics, a department
in which Viola was not uninformed. But Brookfield's
profession had made the family hectic upon all al
lusions to it. The blood tingled in Viola's cheek.
"I wish you wouldn't always throw that up to me;
it isn't our fault that Uncle Jack's a sporting man."
"Why, Viola I was praising him," Clay said, im
pulsively, sighting the forbidden ground on which he
had inadvertently trod; and with that sure fatality
that makes blunder multiply, he added, "I think
your uncle Jack's the gamest man in Kentucky."
"Nor that, either," Viola said, forbiddingly; and
then, with a surge of loyalty to the uncle whom she
could see from where she stood, "I don't criticise my
uncle Jack, but he's a lot better man than just a
fighter or a card-player I love him for his big
heart."
" So do I. If I'd 'a' thought you cared, I'd have said
you were too much like him at heart to let a fellow
come a-courting you if you meant to refuse him I'd
have said that and that was all that was in my mind
when I asked about Prank Hardmuth." In consoling
abandonment of the issue, he continued, "I don't
care what Frank Hardmuth said, either, if it wasn't
personal that way."
44
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Frank Hardmuth's nothing to me." The girl's
annoyance was reassuring.
"And he won't be, will he?" Clay pleaded, boyishly,
seating himself beside her on the sofa and peering into
her half-averted face. "Say that, because I'm aw
fully in love with you."
"Are you?" she asked, in evident hospitality for
the subject.
"You bet I am," the boy responded, vibrantly
"just tomfool heels over head in love with you."
"You never said so."
"I never said so because mother told me that a
boy in an architect's office had better wait until he
was a partner. But I can't wait, Viola, if other fel
lows are pushing me too hard."
Viola apparently approved of the boy's initiative,
for she answered :
"Uncle Jack says you're a regular architect, if
there ever was one."
"It's what you think that makes a difference to me."
"Well, I think Uncle Jack certainly knows."
"And an architect's just as good as a lawyer," Clay
urged, with his rival still in mind.
"Every bit," his sweetheart acquiesced.
It is possible that if either or both of the parties
had been represented by attorney their understand
ing might have been regarded as falling somewhat
short of a betrothal. In the absence of competent
advisers, however, and perhaps of sufficiently guiding
experience or research, the young people by an un
spoken assent, none the less satisfactory because it
was tacit, met in an embrace.
45
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Viola!" the boy said, in trembling undertone, as
her head rested on his shoulder.
There are other ways of becoming engaged. The
process is one so volatile that almost every ingredient
or contribution,, whether of time or place or circum
stance, alters its chemistry. In fact, much of the
charm that hallows that entire period known as ' ' the
engagement" is due to the same unfailing answer to
all the experimental tests that may be made by the
manifold reagents in love's laboratory.
In promising exploration of at least one other
route, Viola began :
"I don't mind telling you now he was speaking for
himself Frank Hardmuth."
"By Jove!" Clay exclaimed, mistaking consequence
for coincidence. "On this very night?"
"Yes."
"It seems like the hand of Providence that I was
here."
One sure indication of true love is that the element
of fate is so plainly, so early, discernible.
"Let's sit down."
Holding both her hands, Clay led the girl to the
sofa.
"You've got confidence in me, haven't you?"
"Yes; I've always said to mother, 'Clay Whipple
will make his mark some day.' I should say I have
confidence in you."
The boy laughed joyously. There was a framed
sheepskin from the University of Pennsylvania hang
ing in his mother's bedroom, and several letters of
approval from the firm of architects with which he
46
THE WITCHING HOUR
was associated, but Viola's last remark was his real
diploma. He went on in rapid explanation, taking
her into almost conjugal confidence as to his pros
pects.
"Of course, the big jobs pay things like insurance
buildings; but my heart's in domestic architecture,
and if you don't laugh at me I'll tell you some
thing."
"Laugh at you about your work and your ambi
tions! Why, Clay!"
"I do some work on most of the domestic interiors
for the firm already, and whenever I plan a second
floor or staircase I can see you plain as day walking
through the rooms or saying good-night over the
balusters."
"Really? You mean in your mind."
"No, with my eyes. Domestic architecture is the
most poetic work a man can get into outside of down
right poetry itself."
"it must be if you can see it all that way," Viola
assented, not without some bewilderment.
"Every room," Clay continued to explain. "I can
see your short sleeves as you put your hands over the
balusters and sometimes you push up your front
hair with the back of your hand so."
"Oh, this ?" The girl laughed, dramatizing his sug
gestion, and smoothing her pompadour into obedience.
"All girls do that."
"But not just the same as you do it," Clay pro
tested, tenderly. "Yes, I can see every little motion
you make."
"Whenever you care to think about me?"
47
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Bless you, no that's the trouble." There was a
haunted flutter in his expression.
"What trouble?"
"The pictures of you don't come just when I want
them to come, especially in the dark."
"Why, how funny!"
"In the dark sometimes they form like the views
from a magic lantern. They glow strong and vivid,
and then fade into the black, and then when I lie
down at night that effect sometimes repeats and re
peats until I've had to light the gas in order to go
to sleep."
"Pictures of me?"
"Pictures of my work or anything that's been in
my mind a good deal during the day, and sometimes
pictures of things that I can't remember having seen
before."
"Why, I never heard of anything like that."
"Well, it happens to me often." The boy was si
lent for a moment, as though searching his memory
for an example; and then, as his eye caught the
draped hangings of the room, he said, "Now, I de
signed this room for your uncle Jack, but before I'd
put a brush in my color-box I saw this very Genoese
velvet." He waved his hand, indicating the walls.
"And I saw the picture-frames in their places that
Corot right there. I've got kind of a superstition
about that picture." Again there crept into his eyes
that almost haunted look that had arrested Viola's
attention earlier in their talk.
"A superstition!" exclaimed the girl, looking from
his face to the picture indicated.
48
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Yes. I said to Jack, 'Have anything else you
want on the other walls, but right there I wish you'd
put a Corot that I've seen at a dealer's in New York*
and he did it."
"Uncle Jack generally has his own way about pict
ures."
"I only mean," said Clay, hastily disclaiming any
pretence of mastery "I only mean that your uncle
Jack approved of my taste in the matter. But my
idea of this house really started with and grew
around that canvas of Corot's."
"Then it isn't always me that you see?"
"Always you when I think about a real house, you
bet a house for me. And you'll be there, won't
you?"
"Will I?" Viola tempted him with the feminine
instinct which however frequently its possessor may
be half wooer always is on guard against the re
corded fact.
"Yes," Clay pleaded, "say T will.'"
"I will." And once more the happy suitor folded
her in his arms.
Perhaps for the progress of their understanding it
was as well that both the mothers, having finished
their examination of the dwelling, should have re-
entered the room at that moment.
Helen regarded the young couple with scarcely a
flutter of astonishment; but Mrs. Campbell, doubly
on the defensive both as the mother of the weaker
vessel and as the quasi-hostess, exclaimed, in com
mingling astonishment, warning, and rebuke:
"Why, Viola!"
49
THE WITCHING HOUR
"I've asked her," Clay said, addressing his mother
and still retaining hold of Viola's hand.
Mrs. Campbell turned accusingly to her guest.
"Helen, you knew?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Campbell looked back to the young couple for
further explanation, and in response to her gaze Clay
said:
"And I've asked Jack, too."
"What?"
"We're engaged if you say it's all right."
"And you, Viola?"
"Yes," the girl nodded.
"Well, if Jack's been consulted, and you all know
of it," said Alice, making a blanket distribution of
the blame, "I should be a very hopeless minority."
"Why any minority?" Clay asked.
"Only the necessary considerations" then turn
ing to the boy's mother ' ' Clay's prospects, his youth."
"Why, he designs most of the work for his firm
now," Viola urged, in a wish to eliminate what she
apprehended as the principal objection attaching to
his youth.
"That is, dwellings," Clay modestly amended.
"I should advise waiting myself until Clay is in the
firm," Helen said, consolingly addressing her speech
more to the boy than to the others; "and I did advise
delay in speaking to Viola."
"I'd 'a' waited, mother, only Frank Hardmuth pro
posed to Viola to-night."
"To-night!" exclaimed Mrs. Campbell, for whom
surprises were coming rapidly.
50
THE WITCHING HOUR
"At the opera," Viola answered.
"At the opera?" her mother repeated, and then in
panic helplessness to Helen she complained, "One
isn't safe anywhere."
Clay, pursuing this seeming advantage, asked:
"And you wouldn't want him. So you do con
sent, don't you?"
"I think your mother and I should talk it over."
"Well, it's a thing a fellow doesn't usually ask his
mother to arrange, but "
"You mean privately?" Viola asked.
"Yes," said her mother.
The young couple hesitated, doubting the policy of
being unrepresented in the conference; but as the
mothers seemed agreed upon this condition, and as
the habit of filial obedience was still strong, Clay
said to his sweetheart:
"We can go to the billiard-room, I suppose?"
"Come on," Viola assented, moving to the door.
"You know, mother, how I feel about it," Clay
said.
Helen nodded in reassuring sympathy. The boy
and girl left their mothers together.
"I supposed you had guessed it," Helen said to
Alice, who was still maintaining her injured pose.
The latter made one or two ineffectual gasps at re
sponse, and, finding that her delay was adding to the
uncertainty of the things she had in mind to say,
she made a virtue of surrender to complete frank
ness.
"I had, but when the moment arrives, after all, it's
such a surprise that a mother can't act naturally."
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Clay is really very trustworthy for his age," said
Helen.
"There's only one thing to discuss. I haven't men
tioned it because well, because I've seen so little
of you since it began, my dear Helen, and because
the fault is in my own family."
"Fault?"
"Yes, Jack's fault." Mrs. Campbell debated a
moment the propriety of proceeding, and then, with
an influx of resolution, she looked straight at Helen
and announced, "Clay is playing."
"Clay?"
"Here with Jack's friends."
"Clay," Helen repeated, unwilling to realize that
the blight which had fallen upon her own romance was
possibly settling upon the life of her boy, "gambling ?"
"I don't quite get used to the word" Mrs. Camp
bell winced "though we've had a lifetime of it
gambling."
"I shouldn't have thought Jack would do that with
my boy."
"Jack hasn't our feminine point of view and be
sides, Jack is calloused to it."
"You should have talked to Jack yourself."
"Talked to him? I did much more that is, as
I much more as a sister depending on a brother for
support could do." Mrs. Campbell paused as she
passed in reminiscence various interviews with her
brother; then resolutely going back to the beginning
of the trouble, she continued, " You know, Jack really
built this place for me and Viola."
" I'd thought so yes."
52
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Viola is the very core of Jack's heart. Well, we
both left the house and went into our little apartment,
and are there now. A woman can't do much more
than that and still take her living from a man, can
she?"
"No."
"And it hurt him hurt him past any idea."
"You did that because my Clay was playing
here?"
' ' Not entirely Clay everybody. ' ' And then in jus
tification of her treatment of the brother, between
whom and herself there was genuine affection, Mrs.
Campbell explained:
"There isn't a better-hearted man nor an abler one
in the State than Jack Brookfield, but I had my
daughter to consider. There were two nights under
our last city government when nothing but the in
fluence of this Frank Hardmuth " at the mention
of the name she dropped her voice and glanced cau
tiously toward the dining-room, whence Hardmuth's
harsh laughter could be heard issuing "nothing but
his influence kept the police from coming into this
house and arresting everybody think of it!"
"Dreadful!"
"Now, that's something, Helen, that I wouldn't
tell a soul but you Viola doesn't know it; but Jack's
card-playing came between you and him years ago,
and so you may know it you may even have some
influence with Jack."
" I ? " Helen sighed and smiled pathetically. ' ' Oh
no."
"Yes," Alice answered, firmly, "this supper to-night
53
THE WITCHING HOUR
was Jack's idea for you the box at the opera for
you."
"Why, he didn't even sit with us."
"Also for you. Jack Brookfield is a more notable
character in Louisville to-day than he was twenty-
two years ago. His company would have made you
the subject of unpleasant comment. That's why he
left us alone in the box."
"Isn't it a pity a terrible pity," Helen mused,
slowly.
"A terrible pity," Mrs. Campbell echoed.
Further confidences between them were prevented
by the entrance of the men from the dining-room.
"I tell the gentlemen we've left the ladies to them
selves long enough, Mrs. Campbell," Hardmuth said,
in a prosecutor's rasping voice slightly stimulated.
"Quite long enough, Mr. Hardmuth."
"Where's the young lady Jack's niece?" inquired
Denning, frankly, looking about for the more at
tractive metal.
"In the billiard-room I believe," Helen answered.
"Oh," said Denning, in undisguised disappointment,
"Jack's been telling us what a great girl she is."
"Some of us knew that without being told," Hard
muth boasted, from a group near the fireplace.
"And she's wonderfully like you," Denning con
tinued, laboriously, resolved to bring up his average
by a compliment well turned "wonderfully like you. "
"You compliment me," Helen said, smiling.
"Are you under the impression you're speaking to
Viola's mother?" said Jack, taking Denning by the
arm.
54
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Ain't I?"
"This lady is Mrs. Whipple." And Jack, leaving
the young millionaire in his embarrassment, turned
to Hardmuth and Ellinger.
"Oh, Clay's mother?" Denning inquired, cau
tiously. Helen nodded. "Well, your boy," he per
sisted, determined upon some appropriate recogni
tion of the relationship "your boy, Mrs. Whipple,
plays in the hardest luck of all the people I ever sat
next to."
Jack checked any further disclosure by quickly re
turning to Denning.
"You depreciate yourself, Tom; there's no hard
kick in merely sitting next to you."
Helen heard Jack growling in an undertone of re
buke to Denning.
"I meant unlucky at billiards," Denning defended
himself, in hopeless audibility. "They're all right,
ain't they?"
As he left Jack and moved toward the ladies in ex
onerated self-satisfaction, he said to Mrs. Campbell :
"I can see now that your daughter resembles
you."
"I think Clay and I should be going," Helen sug
gested to Mrs. Campbell.
The surroundings, so agreeable a few moments
before, had grown suddenly distasteful. Denning's
dulness and Hardmuth's aggressive coarseness were
doubly offensive when she regarded them as associ
ate factors in her boy's degradation. She caught a
reflection of her own thought in Mrs. Campbell's
troubled countenance, and a quick pity for the woman
55
THE WITCHING HOUR
so unfortunately situated tempered the severity of
her tone and attitude.
Jack had drawn his watch and was expostulating:
"It's only a little after twelve, and no one ever goes
to sleep in this house before two."
Helen caught his glance, and again in its telegraphy
she read his understanding of the contretemps and
his assurance that the real Brookfield was far above
the mental squalor of the association. Mrs. Camp
bell took Helen's hand in silent furtherance of Jack's
invitation.
"Shall we join them?" Jack said to Helen, referring
to the couple in the billiard-room.
"I'd like it."
The party moved to the door with the exception of
Hardmuth, who bit the end of a fresh cigar and
said:
"Jack! just a minute."
Brookfield excused himself ; Ellinger took his place
at Helen's side, and the party passed into the hall
way, from which Denning's voice drawled in diminu
endo:
"No, Kansas City is my home, but I don't live
there."
V
OROOKFIELD was not altogether unprepared
D for the interview Hardmuth demanded of him,
though uncertain as to the extent of its disclosure.
Hardmuth's attentions to Viola, both in the box at the
theatre when Jack had watched them through the
opera-glasses, and again at the supper-table, had fore
warned Viola's uncle. Hardmuth flattered himself
that he too had a fair understanding of Brookfield's
attitude; this he attributed to what he was pleased
to call his knowledge of human nature. Hardmuth's
profession, aside from a natural shrewdness, had made
him quick to measure any degree of friendliness or
hostility on the part of another man. In addition
to this there was between himself and Brookfield an
intimacy of many years. To go no deeper into the
intuitive sense of either man, the long study each
had made of the other across the card -table had
equipped them individually with a special prevision.
Left together, Hardmuth began what promised to
be a serious colloquy by the nonchalant confession:
"Took advantage of your hospitality, old man, to
night."
"Advantage?" queried Brookfield.
"Yes; I've been talking to your niece."
"Oh!"
57
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Proposed to her."
"Yes?"
"Yes," repeated Hardmuth.
Brookfield's face took on that inscrutable look with
which he was accustomed to regard his hand just
after the deal or draw. The slight pause was broken
by the entrance of the young darky.
"A gentleman called you on the telephone, suh."
' ' Who ?" Brookfield consulted his watch.
"Judge De Brennus name sounds like," Jo an
swered; "holdin' the wire, suh."
"I don't know any Judge De Brennus."
"Says you don't know him, suh; but he's got to
leave town in the mornin', and he'd be very much
obliged if you'd see him to-night."
"Did you tell him we were dark to-night?"
"He don't want no game. It's about a picture a
picture you've got."
"A picture?"
"He wants to look at it."
Brookfield turned interrogatively to Hardmuth, and
that gentleman, anxious to defer any interruption of
the business in hand, said:
"It's a blind."
By this phrase from the criminal vocabulary Hard
muth conveyed that the caller, under the pretence of
examining a picture, was really seeking incriminating
evidence against the proprietor of the establishment.
Brookfield smiled as he thought of the character of
the party at present within his walls and the conse
quent disappointment of any investigator.
"Well, this is a good night to work a blind
58
THE WITCHING HOUR
on me; tell the gentleman I'll be up for half an
hour."
Jo disappeared.
"So you proposed to Viola?" said Brookfield, tak
ing up the conference at the point of interruption.
"Yes; how do you feel about that?"
Brookfield hesitated. To have answered truthfully
would have introduced an uncalled-for bitterness.
"Well, you know the story of the barkeeper asking
the owner, 'Is Grady good for a drink?' 'Has he had
it?' 'He has.' 'He is.'"
"Just that way, eh?" Hardmuth plainly was not
complimented.
Jack smiled and nodded.
"Well," said Hardmuth, applying the illustration,
"she hasn't answered me."
Brookfield grunted tentatively. Hardmuth con
tinued :
"And under those conditions, how's Grady 's credit
with you?"
"Well, Frank, on any ordinary proposition you're
aces with me you know that."
"But for the girl?"
"It's different."
"Why?"
"She's only nineteen, you know."
"My sister married at eighteen."
"I mean you're thirty-five." Brookfield made a
show of deliberation.
"That's not an unusual difference."
"Not an impossible difference, but I think unusual
and rather unadvisable."
s 59
THE WITCHING HOUR
"That's what you think ?" The resistance in Hard-
muth's tone was provokingly near aggression.
"Yes that's what I think," Brookfield said, with
equal positiveness.
"But suppose the lady is willing to give that han
dicap what then?"
Brookfield shrugged his shoulders. "Let's cross
that bridge when we come to it."
"You mean you'd still drag a little?"
"Do you think Viola likes you well enough to say
yes?" Jack asked, still unwilling to speak finally.
"Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."
"We have come to that one, Frank; there's another
man in the running, and I think she. likes him."
"You mean young Whipple ? Well, he took second
money in the box-party to-night, and at the supper-
table, too. I'll agree to take care of him if you're
with me."
"I think he's your biggest opposition," Brookfield
answered, divertingly.
"But you," persisted Hardmuth "can I count on
you in the show-down?"
Brookfield paused, searching his mind for some
phrase that would still evade the issue.
"If Viola doesn't care enough for you, Frank, to
accept you in spite of anything or everything, I
shouldn't try to influence her in your favor."
Hardmuth's brow knitted, intent upon his purpose.
His question, however, was interrupted by the return
of Ellinger, who sauntered in with an exaggerated
expression of weariness, complaining:
"I think a bum game of billiards is about as thin
60
THE WITCHING HOUR
an entertainment for the outsiders as 'Who's got the
button?'"
Brookfield smiled in welcome. He hoped that the
interview with Hardmuth might be checked and
further conference postponed until he had an oppor
tunity of talking the matter over with his niece. But
Hardmuth's mood was not so complacent. He took
the old sport by the elbow with an air of authority
and led him toward the dining-room.
"I've got a little business, Lew, with Jack for a
minute."
The direction in which the exile was propelled had
as much to do with Ellinger's tractability as had its
declared purpose or authority. He answered, amiably :
"Well, I can sit in by the bottle, can't I ?"
Assuming Brookfield 's consent to that agreeable pas
time, Lew left them, still railing at the mild form of
the entertainment he had just abandoned.
"Such awful stage waits while they chalk their
cues!"
Hardmuth turned to Brookfield, persisting: "But
you wouldn't try to influence her against me?"
Once more Jack spoke slowly, looking for the
easiest way to say a disagreeable thing if it might not
be completely avoided.
"She's about the closest thing to me there is
that niece of mine."
"Well?"
"I'd protect her happiness to the limit of my
ability."
"But if she likes me, or should come to like me
enough, her happiness would be with me, wouldn't it ?"
61
THE WITCHING HOUR
"She might think so."
"Well?"
"But she'd be mistaken; it would be a mistake,
old chap."
"I know twenty men twelve to fifteen years older
than their wives all happy wives happy, too."
"It isn't just that."
"What is it?"
"She's a fine girl that niece of mine not a blem
ish. I want to see her get the best the very best
in family, position, character."
"Anything against the Hardmuths?" the attorney
demanded, taking the first feature in Brookfield's
enumeration. Brookfield shook his head.
"I'm assistant district attorney here," Hardmuth
continued, addressing his mind to the question of
position, "and next trip I'll be the district attorney."
"I said character."
"Character?" echoed Hardmuth, not quite so
stoutly as he had made his other assertions.
"Yes," Jack answered.
"You mean there's anything against my reputa
tion?"
"No; I mean character pure and simple I mean
the moral side of you."
"Well, by God!" exclaimed Hardmuth, in a whis
per of feigned astonishment.
"You see, I'm keeping the girl in mind all the time."
"My morals!"
"Let's say your moral fibre."
"Well, for richness this beats anything I've struck.
Jack Brookfield talking to me about my moral fibre!"
62
THE WITCHING HOUR
This was the method of the attorney who endeav
ors to weaken testimony by attack. A shrewder man
might have seen the menace in the eye of Brookfield
despite the quiet tone with which he responded:
"You asked for it."
"Yes I did, and now I'm going to ask for the show
down. What do you mean by it?"
The desire as well as the latitude for finesse had
passed for Brookfield.
"I mean, as long as you've called attention to the
richness of Jack Brookfield talking to you on the
subject, that Jack Brookfield is a professional gam
bler people get from Jack Brookfield just what he
promises a square deal. Do you admit that?"
"I admit that. Go on."
"You're the assistant prosecuting attorney of the
city of Louisville. The people don't get from you
just what you promised, not by a jugful."
"I'm the assistant prosecuting attorney, remember
I promised to assist in prosecution, not to institute
it."
"I expect technical defence, old man, but this was
to be a show-down."
"Let's have it; I ask for particulars."
"Here's one. You play here in my house, and you
know it's against the law that you've sworn to sup
port."
"I'll support the law whenever it's invoked. In
dict me and I'll plead guilty."
"This evasion is what I mean by lack of moral
fibre."
Hardmuth was a sufficiently keen observer to see
63
the justice of Brookfield's remark. That it was
merited only made it rankle the more. He was vain
enough also to imagine himself Brookfield's superior
in intellect, and he found it impossible to refrain from
allusion to that belief.
"Perhaps we're a little shy somewhere on mental
fibre," he insinuated.
"You make me say it, do you, Frank? Your duty
is at least to keep secret the information of your office ;
contrary to that duty, you've betrayed the secrets
of your office to warn me and other men of this city
when their game was in danger from the police."
"You throw that up to me?"
"Throw nothing you asked for it."
"I stand by my friends."
There was criticism as well as defiance in Hard-
muth's answer.
"Exactly," Brookfield responded, "and you've
taken an oath to stand by the people."
"Do you know any sure politician that doesn't
stand by his friends?"
"Not one."
"Well, there." And again Hardmuth felt himself
vindicated.
"But I don't know any sure politician that I'd tell
my niece to marry."
"That's a little too fine-haired for me," the attorney
sneered.
"I think it is."
Brookfield's expression of his opinion had given it
value to his own ear, and he felt a composure in it
that completely relieved him of his anger of the mo-
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THE WITCHING HOUR
ment before. This repose was, if possible, more gall
ing to Hardmuth than the criticism had been. Argu
ment exhausted, he resorted to the final test accord
ing to his experience.
"I'll bet you a thousand dollars I'm the next prose
cuting attorney for this city."
"I'll take half of that if you can place it," Brook-
field answered, readily adopting Hardmuth 's point of
view. "I'll bet even money you're anything in poli
tics that you go after for the next ten years; but
I'll give odds that the time will come when you're
'way up there, full of honor and reputation and
pride, and somebody will drop to you, Frank; then
flosh!" Brookfield turned his hand, graphically
dramatizing the flop of a landed fish on a dock
"you for the down-and-outs."
"Rot!"
"It's the same in every game in the world the
crook either gets too gay or gets too slow, or both,
and the 'come on' sees him make the pass. I've
been pall-bearer for three of the slickest men that
ever shuffled a deck in Kentucky just a little too
slick, that's all and they've always got it when it
was hardest for the family."
"So that will be my finish, will it?"
"Sure!"
Hardmuth puffed his cigar a moment, mentally
contemplating the prospect, and then as his mind
came back to the proposition in hand, and to the con
siderations against him, he asked, angrily:
"You like the moral fibre of this young Whipple
kid?"
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"I don't know."
"Weak as dish-water."
"I don't think so."
"I'll do him at any game you name."
"He's only a boy you should."
"I'll do him at this game," Hardmuth persisted.
"What game?"
"The girl. I thought I could count on you because
well, for the very tips that you hold against me;
but you're only her uncle, old man, after all."
"That's all," Brookfield said, smiling; but there
was more threat than admission in tone and eye.
"And if she says yes "
"Frank!" Jack's temper was plainly rising; he
paused in an evident effort to control it. When he
spoke again Hardmuth noticed that there was more
menace in his manner. "Some day the truth will
come out as to who murdered a governor-elect of
this State."
"Is there any doubt about that ?" Hardmuth non
chalantly shook the ashes from his cigar.
"Isn't there?" came in that deadly monotone of
Brookfield's.
"The man that fired the shot is in jail." Hard-
muth's tone carried more fervor than a simple reply
would seem to have demanded.
Brookfield's voice kept on its even, threatening
level, as though the pause had been for effect rather
than for Hardmuth's answer.
"I don't want my niece mixed up in it."
"What do you mean by that?"
Hardmuth was now facing the gambler, livid and
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THE WITCHING HOUR
trembling, his eyes narrowed to little gleaming slits.
There was no weakness or wavering in the man who
faced him. Brookfield had said the thing that he had
promised himself a hundred times he would never
say, the thing that, even now reluctantly said to pro
tect his niece, it would never, he felt, be necessary to
repeat. The situation was in Hardmuth's parlance
a veritable show-down. One question more, one
more answer, and there would be blows or a cring
ing criminal and his master.
Helen entered the room. The visual duel between
the men was broken. Hardmuth turned to Helen
with an inquiry concerning the young people, and
when informed that they were still at the billiard-
table, mumbled something about "looking them
over," and left the room.
"Won't you come, too?" Helen asked Jack, with a
seriousness that showed her coming into the room,
had not been casual.
"I'd rather stay here with you."
"That gentleman that called after supper "
"Mr. Denning?" Jack prompted.
"Yes. He seems to take pleasure in annoying
Clay."
"Yes; I know that side of Denning."
Brookfield turned toward the dining-room and
called Ellinger. When he entered, Jack asked him to
go into the billiard-room and look after Denning.
"What's he doing?" Lew inquired of Helen.
"Commenting humorously, and hiding the chalk,
and so on," she replied.
"Lit up a little, I suppose," Lew suggested to Jack.
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THE WITCHING HOUR
Jack nodded, and, motioning Ellinger on his way,
said, "Just ride herd on him."
Helen wavered in her impulse to follow Ellinger to
the billiard-room, and finally yielded to Jack as he
indicated a chair.
"He doesn't seem much of a gentleman this Mr.
Denning," she said.
"He wasn't expected to-night."
"Is he one of your clients?" There was more
sarcasm than consideration in Helen's choice of the
word. Jack acknowledged it with a smile.
"One of my clients."
"Clay meets him here?"
"Yes has met him here."
"I didn't think you'd do that, Jack, with my boy."
"Do what?"
"Gamble."
"It's no gamble with your boy, Helen," Jack said,
lightly, "it's a sure thing; he hasn't won a dollar."
"I'm glad you're able to smile over it."
"Perhaps it would seem more humorous to you if
he'd won?"
"If he plays I'd rather see him win, of course."
"That put me in the business winning," Jack
said, seriously. "The thing that makes every gam
bler stick to it is winning occasionally. I've never
let your boy get up from the table a dollar to the
good, and because he was your boy."
"Why let him play at all?"
"He'll play somewhere until he gets sick of it or
marries," Jack answered, wearily.
"Will marriage cure it?"
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"It would have cured me, but you didn't see it
that way."
"You made your choice."
"I asked you to trust me; you wanted some iron
clad pledge well, my dear Helen, that wasn't the
best way to handle a fellow of spirit."
"So you chose the better way?"
"No choice I stood pat, that's all."
"And wasted your life."
"That depends on how you look at it. You mar
ried a doctor who wore himself out in the Philadel
phia hospitals. I've had three meals a day, and this
place and a pretty fat farm and a stable with some
good blood in it."
"And every one of them, Jack, is a monument to
the worst side of you," Helen interrupted. The
criticism was robbed of its implied severity by her
manner, as she walked toward him more in pity than
in rebuke. Jack took both her hands in his as he
answered :
"Prejudice, my dear Helen, prejudice. You might
say that if I'd earned these things in some respectable
combination that starved out all its little competi
tors." Brookfield held the prevalent political disap
proval of monopolies. "But I've simply furnished
a fairly expensive entertainment to eminent citizens
looking for rest."
Helen shook her head at Jack's indulgent descrip
tion of his business.
"I know all the arguments of your profession
Jack, and I don't pretend to answer them any more
than I answer the arguments of reckless women, who
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THE WITCHING HOUR
claim that they are more commendable than their
sisters who make loveless marriages."
"I'm not flattered by the implied comparison
still"
"I only feel sure," Helen went on, "that anything
which the majority of good people condemn is wrong."
She turned from him with an air of finality.
"I'm sorry," Jack said.
"I'd be glad if you meant that but you're not
sorry."
"I am sorry I'm sorry not to have public respect,
as long as you think it's valuable."
"I amuse you, don't I?"
Jack followed her across the room and took the
chair at the end of the table opposite to that upon
which she seated herself. He passed his hand wearily
over his eyes.
"Not a little bit," he said; "but you make me as
blue as the devil, if that's any satisfaction."
"I'd be glad to make you as blue as the devil,
Jack," Helen said, resolutely, "if it meant discontent
with what you are doing if it could make you do
better."
"I'm a pretty old leopard to get nervous about my
spots."
"Why are you blue?"
"You."
"In what way?"
"I had hoped that twenty years of charitable deeds
had made you also charitable in your judgment."
"I hope they have."
"Don't seem to ease up on my specialty."
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"You called your conduct wild oats twenty years
ago."
"It was; but I found such an excellent market for
my wild oats that I had to stay in that branch of the
grain business. Besides, it has been partly your
fault, you know."
"Mine?"
Jack nodded. "Your throwing me over for my
wild oats put it up to me to prove that they were a
better thing than you thought."
"Well, having demonstrated that ?" Helen waited.
Jack, feeling that his financial prosperity and the*
evidences of physical comfort surrounding them was
a sufficient answer, extended his hands complacently,
and with a self-satisfied air added, lazily:
"Here we are."
"Yes," assented Helen, her tone showing that she
had more regard for the sentimental aspect of the
case, "here we are."
"Back in the old town," Jack added, bringing the
consideration to a neutral ground. Then, as he
leaned forward on the table in the playful manner of
the old Jack, the manner that had been so irresistibly
potent in their younger days: "Don't you think it
would be a rather pretty finish, Helen, if, despite all
my leopard's spots, and despite that that Philadel
phia episode of yours
"You call twenty years of marriage episodic?"
Helen broke in, half playfully.
"I call any departure from the main story episodic."
There was a quiet authority in Jack's tone that
compelled Helen to put the leading question:
THE WITCHING HOUR
"And the main story is ?"
"You and I."
"Oh " Helen had been balancing the heavy
paper-cutter in seesaw fashion on the edge of the
table. The positiveness of Jack's answer had occu
pied her sole attention for the moment, and the paper-
cutter fell to the floor with a noticeable thud. Jack
picked it up. On one side, near the handle, the cut
ter was faintly engraved, "Jack, from Helen." It
was one of the few gifts she had made him in her
girlhood days. Jack recalled the afternoon that they
had leaned above the stationer's showcase in which
it had been displayed; his admiration for the imple
ment ; Helen's amusement at some playful remark of
his about the owner of such a paper-cutter being able
not only to gain with it, but also to enforce a liter
ary opinion; he remembered the somewhat astonish
ing price the dealer had put upon it a price geomet
ric in its relation to the cost of smaller paper-cutters
and his delight in its possession on the anniver
sary Helen had chosen to send it to him. Of all the
articles in this curiously fitted library of his, this was
his favorite. There was a natural streak of super
stition in Brookfield, a superstition which his busi
ness had considerably cultivated; he attributed but
few of the things that happened in his day to accident.
That Helen should drop this piece of ivory which for
so many years had been a memento of her, and in con
sequence should bring him to her side, Brookfield re
garded as significant. Lifting the ivory knife from
the floor, he covered both her hands, still resting on
the edge of the table, with his disengaged hand, and
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THE WITCHING HOUR
holding the paper-cutter as he would have held a
sword, he said, in a tone of dreamy persuasion and of
unmistakable resolution :
"Wouldn't it be a pretty finish, Helen, if you took
my hand and I could walk right up to the camera
and say, 'I told you so."
Helen made no answer during the pause that fol
lowed, and with an air of possession Jack added:
"You know I always felt that you were coming
back."
"Oh, did you?"
"Had a candle burning in that window every
night."
"You're sure it wasn't a red light?"
"Dear Helen, have some poetry in your composi
tion. Literally a red light, of course." Jack accept
ed the allusion to his business. "But the real flame
was here" he put his hand on his breast "a flick
ering hope that somewhere somehow somewhen I
should be at rest with the proud Helen that loved and
rode away."
Jack's assumption of playfulness could not disguise
his sincerity of feeling. He had moved behind the
table, and was smiling down upon the beautiful wom
an who sat at the other end of it.
Helen was not smiling. There was something in
the steadiness of her glance that Jack felt was meant
for accusation. She answered with conviction in her
even voice:
' ' I believe you . ' '
"Of course you believe me." Brookfield attempt
ed a counterpointing lightness.
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"You had a way, Jack," Helen continued, reminis-
cently "a way when you were a boy at college of
making me write to you."
"Had I?"
"You know you had. At night about this hour
I'd find it impossible to sleep until I'd got up and
written to you and two days later I'd get from you
a letter that had crossed mine on the road. I don't
believe the word 'telepathy' had been coined then,
but I guessed something of the force, and all these
years I've felt it nagging nagging."
"Nagging?"
"Yes I could keep you out of my waking hours,
out of my thought; but when I surrendered myself
to sleep the call would come and I think it was
rather cowardly of you, really."
Jack was too well read in the current and semi-
scientific comment of the day to pretend any doubt
of the sinister influence that Helen's speech implied.
His strain of superstition also made him readily
tolerant of the imputation, but the knowledge of
his own intent made him ascribe her view entirely
to what he was pleased to call a feminine sentimen
tality. Helen's earnestness, therefore, produced in
him only amusement. His reply was playful.
"I plead guilty to having thought of you, Helen
lots and it was generally when I was alone late
my my clients gone and it was in this room,
" ' Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all save him departed.' "
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THE WITCHING HOUR
And with the quotation of the old song they had
frequently sung together, Jack put his hand theatri
cally upon his breast.
Helen, overlooking his inhospitable reception of
her psychical suggestion, accepted Jack's mood and
met his airy flight.
"And as you say here we are."
"Well, what of my offer?" Jack promptly chal
lenged. "Shall we say to the world 'we told you
so'? What of my picturesque finish?"
He leaned over her chair and held the hand that
lay upon the table. Helen thrilled to the double ap
peal of the vibrant voice and physical nearness of her
old lover it required all her resolution to answer, in
measured tones:
"You know my ideas you've known them twenty-
two years."
"No modifications?" Jack pleaded.
"None."
Brookfield sighed. He moved from behind Helen's
chair to a point within her vision, and pointing to the
floor above, in the rooms of which most of the para
phernalia of the establishment was arranged, he said:
"I'm willing to sell the tables and well, I don't
think I could get interested in this bridge game that
the real good people play would you object to a
gentleman's game of draw now and then?"
"You called it a gentleman's game in those days."
"No leeway at all?"
"No compromise, Jack no."
Brookfield passed his hand wearily across his eyes
as he had done earlier in the interview. His keen
6 75
THE WITCHING HOUR
sense of humor saw something rather droll in this
attitude of himself and Helen her implied condi
tions, his apparent consideration and with a quick
deference that had always been part of his charm
where women were concerned he said:
" I trust you won't consider my seeming hesitation
uncomplimentary.
"Not unprecedented, at least." And Helen smiled
in recollection of a smilar conclusion some two-and-
twenty years before.
"You see, it opens up a new line of thought," Jack
said, reflectively. He pressed his fingers over his
eyes.
"And you have a headache, too," Helen recollected,
with sudden compunction. " It isn't kind, I'm sure."
She stood up and took Jack's hand in hers.
The hall-boy, Jo, came in to announce that the gen
tleman who had telephoned about the picture was
below. Jack asked Helen not to go away, as the
interview would be short, and he added :
"I think we can settle this question to-night, you
and I."
" Please don't put me in the light of waiting for an
answer," she said, with gentle raillery.
" Dear Helen, we're both past that, aren't we ? If
I could only be sure to prove worthy of you! I'm the
one that's waiting for an answer from my own weak
character and rotten irresolution."
It was all the confession that Helen could have
wished. Jack lifted the hand that he still held and
kissed it gently. He kept her hand in his until they
reached the doorway, and still, as she was going, held
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THE WITCHING HOUR
it so fast as to arrest her progress. But she would
not turn her face to him, and after a moment's firm
pressure Jack released his hold, and she quickly dis
appeared. The interview, light as it had been at
times, playful as Jack had tried to make it, had
nevertheless stirred both natures as deeply as two
people of their maturity and experience could be
stirred. They had reconnoitred and established the
most momentous question that could come into the
life of either.
Brookfield turned solemnly back to the table, to
the empty chair, to the paper-cutter that somehow
seemed to have taken a part in their renewed rela
tionship. He smiled as he thought of it, handling the
ivory knife fondly Helen's long-ago gift! The hour,
the very atmosphere of the room, seemed potentially
vibrant ; he was moved to an unwonted degree as he
muttered to himself:
"They say cards make a fellow superstitious well,
I guess they do."
VI
A") Jo ushered the gentleman into the room, Brook-
field recognized him at once as the stranger
whose gaze had so affected him in the theatre. He
saw a man whose age was in the neighborhood of
seventy, slight and graceful in figure, and noticeably
erect for a man so old. The face was poetic, yet not
lacking in strength; the expression one of indulgent
patience. Jo announced the visitor:
"Judge De Brennus."
Brookfield repeated the name with a declination of
welcome. There was a half twinkle of amusement
between them as the visitor, after a glance at the
negro boy, corrected his announcement "Justice
Prentice."
" Oh, Justice Prentice!" said Jack, in immediate rec
ognition of the name; " good evening." Jo left them.
"You are Mr. Brookfield?"
"Yes," Jack assured his visitor.
" I shouldn't have attempted so late a call but that
a friend pointed you out to-night at the opera, Mr.
Brookfield, and said that your habit was well "
"Not to retire immediately?" Jack suggested.
The Justice nodded with a smile.
"Will you be seated?" Brookfield indicated an
easy-chair.
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THE WITCHING HOUR
" I'm only passing through the city," said the Jus
tice. " I called to see a Corot that I understand you
bought from Knoedler."
"That's it." And Brookfield pointed to the canvas
which earlier in the evening Clay had been telling
Viola was his inspiration for the decoration of the
room.
"Thank you you don't object to my looking at
it?"
"Not at all." Brookfield touched a button and
turned on the battery of lights above the picture.
The old Justice regarded the canvas affectionately
for a moment, and then said:
"That's it. I thought at one time that I would
buy this picture."
"You know it, then?"
"Yes. Are you particularly attached to it, Mr.
Brookfield?"
"I think not irrevocably."
"Oh."
Brookfield, divining that his caller was a possible
purchaser, took from the table a pad of paper and
busied himself with a slight computation covering
the cost of the Corot, the interest on the invest
ment, and the like. He had seated himself where the
table interposed between his hands and the gaze of
his visitor, and he thought himself unobserved. At
any rate, the Justice, with his eyes still upon the can
vas, had no chance to see him, yet after a moment's
interval he inquired:
" Do I understand that is what you paid for it, or
what you intend to ask me for it?"
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"What?"
"Sixty-five hundred."
Brookfield's glance involuntarily sought the figures
on the paper.
"I didn't speak the price, did I?"
"Didn't you? Oh" the Justice paused "I
couldn't pay that amount."
"That's its price, however," Brookfield said, struck
by the remarkable coincidence between the sum
named and the one he had written on the pad.
"I regret I didn't buy it from the dealer when I
had my chance." The Justice looked about the
room. "I couldn't have given it so beautiful a set
ting, Mr. Brookfield, nor such kindred, but it would
not have been friendless."
The speaker crossed to the fireplace, regarding a
second canvas that was hanging there.
"That's a handsome marine."
"Yes."
"Pretty idea I read recently in an essay of Dr.
van Dyke's his pictures were for him windows by
which he looked out from his study into the world."
There was no answer or comment from Brookfield,
and the Justice added, interrogatively:
"Yes?"
"Quite so." Brookfield roused from his reverie.
The Justice left off contemplating the picture
above the fireplace, and moved to another hanging
over the doorway that led to the dining-room. His
back was now fully turned toward Brookfield, who
looked at him with an increasing interest. The Jus
tice, glancing over his shoulder, said :
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"M Washington."
"What?"
"My home is Washington I thought you asked
me."
"No, I didn't," answered Brookfield, a trifle petu
lantly.
"I beg your pardon." And again the Justice fell
to looking at the picture.
Jack rose from his chair, every nerve alert and
every sense taut as he said to himself, under his
breath :
"But I'm damned if I wasn't just going to ask
him!"
"And the phases of your world, Mr. Brookfield,
have been very prettily multiplied." The visitor was
looking about the room with ordinary ease, and ap
parently unaware that he had startled his host.
"Thank you," Brookfield said, answering the state
ment. " May I offer you a cigar ?"
"Thank you, I won't smoke."
"Or a glass of wine?"
"Nothing. I will return to the hotel, first asking
you again to excuse my untimely call." The old
gentleman retraced his steps across the room to a
position in front of the Corot, taking his hat from the
table as he did so, preparatory to going.
"I wish you'd sit down awhile." Brookfield had
a desire to know more of the man. The Justice, un
mindful of the interruption, continued:
" But I didn't know until I missed it from Knoed-
ler's how large a part of my world my dream-world
I had been looking at through that frame."
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"Well, if it's a sentimental matter, Mr. Justice, we
might talk it over."
"I mustn't submit the sentimental side of it, Mr.
Brookfield, and where I have so so intruded."
"That's the big side of anything for me the senti
mental."
"I'm sure of it and I mustn't take advantage of
that knowledge."
"You're sure of it?" Brookfield asked, uneasily.
"Yes."
"Is that my reputation?"
"I don't know your reputation."
"Then how are you sure of it?"
"Oh, I see you," said the Justice, looking at him
steadily, "and well, we have met."
For the second time that night Brookfield was con
scious of that pair of eyes ; for the second time in his
life, as far as he could remember, that creepy feeling
of unreasonable fear tingled over his shoulders and
through the roots of his hair. Brookfield felt, as the
Justice looked at him, that not only his life but his
mind and his very soul were open books to that pene
trating gaze. There was in it nothing of menace, yet
it required all of Brookfield's fortitude to meet it.
He would have liked to speak to say some defensive
thing, but he uttered only an impotent and half-
audible "Oh!"
The spell, if spell it were, was lifted by a pleasant
bow from the Justice and an equally pleasant "Good
night." The old gentleman had reached the doorway,
and was in the hall before Brookfield pulled himself
together sufficiently to say:
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"One moment." The Justice turned inquiringly.
"You said your address was Washington?"
"Yes."
"You thought at the time I was about to ask you
that question?"
"I thought you had asked it," the Justice answered,
quite honestly and easily, at the same time retracing
his steps into the room.
"And you thought a moment before I had said
sixty-five hundred for the picture?"
"Yes."
"Do you often pick answers that way?" Brookfield
asked, affecting a lightness which he by no means
felt.
"Well, I think we all do at times."
"We all do?"
"Yes; but we speak the answers only as we get
older and less attentive, and mistake a person's
thought for his spoken word."
"A person's thought?"
"Yes."
"Do you mean that you know what I think?"
And again, although this time there was nothing
penetrating in the old man's look, Brookfield felt a
premonition of that creepy feeling in the shoulders.
It was dissipated by the human quality of Prentice's
reply.
"I hadn't meant to claim any monopoly of that
power. It's my opinion that every one reads the
thoughts of others that is, some of the thoughts."
"Everyone?"
"Oh yes."
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"That I do?"
' ' I should say you more generally than the majority
of men."
There was a moment's fraternity in the look that
the Justice now fixed upon him a fraternity that
robbed the penetration of all discomfiture.
"There was a woman said something like that to
me not ten minutes ago."
"A woman would be very apt to be conscious
of it."
Jack looked at him, not altogether without be
wilderment.
"You really believe that that stuff?"
"Oh yes; and I'm not a pioneer in the belief. The
men who declare the stuff most stoutly are scientists
who have given it most attention."
"How do they prove it?"
"They don't prove it that is, not universally.
Each man must do that for himself, Mr. Brookfield."
"How?"
The Justice smiled patiently. "Well, I'll tell you
all I know of it."
Brookfield had taken Helen's chair at the end of
the table was leaning forward on the table in his
eagerness. The Justice again put down his hat, and
with the manner of a man who felt that he was per
forming a duty to an inquirer, and with an entire
absence of display, he said, in a voice the melody and
modulation of which Brookfield was beginning to
notice pleasurably:
"Every thought is active that is, born of a desire
and travels from us, or it is born of the desire of
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some one else and comes to us. We send them out
or we take them in that is all."
"How do we know which we are doing?"
"If we are idle and empty-headed our brains are
the play-rooms for the thoughts of others frequently
rather bad. If we are active, whether benevolently
or malevolently, our brains are work-shops power
houses. I was passively regarding the picture. Your
active idea of the price registered, that is all; so did
your wish to know where I was from."
Brookfield moved earnestly and uneasily in his
chair. He started ineffectually to say something,
and then, out of the rush of questions that clamored
for answer, he blurted:
"You say 'our brains.' Do you still include mine ?"
"Yes." "
"You said mine more than the majority of men's?"
"I think so."
"Why hasn't this whatever it is effect happened
to me, then?"
"It has."
"Why didn't I know it?"
' ' Vanity perhaps. ' '
"Vanity?"
"Yes often some friend has broached some inde
pendent subject, and you have said, 'I was just going
to speak of that myself. " :
"Very often; but"
"Believing the idea was your own, your vanity shut
out the probably proper solution that it was his."
"Well, how then does a man tell which of his
thoughts are his own?"
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"It's difficult most of his idle ones are not.
When we drift we are with the current. To go
against it, or make even an eddy of our own, we must
swim most everything less than that is helpless."
"Well, I haven't been exactly helpless," Jack said,
smiling.
"No one would call you so, Mr. Brookfield you
have a strong psychic a strong hypnotic power."
"You think so?"
"I know it."
"This business?" Brookfield mimicked the stereo
typed gesture of the mesmerizer.
"That business," answered Prentice, smiling at the
word, "for the beginner."
"You mean that I could hypnotize anybody?"
"Many persons yes; but I wouldn't do it if I were
vou." And the Justice took his hat to go.
"Why not?" '
"Grave responsibility."
"In what way?"
The Justice inhaled deeply, as if to embark upon
an extended explanation ; then Brookfield saw a wave
of fatigue and amusement cross his face as the extent
of his proposed undertaking evidently appalled him.
Perceiving that his host was aware of this, the Justice
answered, with a smile distinctly paternal:
"I'll send you a book about it if I may."
"Instructions?"
"And cautions yes. If you tire of your Corot"
the Justice turned again to the door and the picture
hanging beside it ' ' I should be glad to hear from you."
"Why can't I save postage by just thinking an-
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THE WITCHING HOUR
other price?" bantered Brookfield, following the
Justice out of the library.
Prentice met him in his own spirit as he replied:
"The laws on contracts haven't yet recognized that
form of tender."
Brookfield had said good-night to his visitor, and
was lingering, thoughtfully, in the hallway when
the sound of raised voices reached his ears. He
hurried back to the library, wondering, as he heard
Denning's tipsy laugh, what mischief he was up to
now.
Despite Ellinger's efforts to control Denning the
latter had continued to annoy Clay and Viola in their
very amateur attempts at billiards, and several trips
across the hall to the sideboard in the dining-room
had not tended to improve his pleasantries. From
mere playfulness his intrusions had taken on the char
acter of opposition; this opposition had developed
into ugliness, and finally into aggression. In all of
these phases his attack had been secretly aggravated
by Hardmuth, who saw with delight the inexperienced
boy, under the strain and irritation, appearing in less
and less favorable light before Viola.
Once when Denning had confronted Clay at the
rail of the billiard-table, both Ellinger and Viola, who
with Hardmuth constituted the remaining company
in the billiard-room, had noticed the boy suddenly
quail and turn away from his tormentor. As Denning
again approached him they heard Clay suddenly call
out in evident terror:
"Don't come near me with that scarf-pin!"
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THE WITCHING HOUR
The eccentricity of Clay's aversion called Ellinger's
attention to the pin which the young millionaire was
wearing an ordinary stick-pin fitted with the semi
precious stone commonly known as a cat's-eye.
Denning, in his intoxication, was hardly to be
blamed for not understanding the character of Clay's
objection to his scarf-pin; Ellinger himself didn't un
derstand it; but the boy's excitement when the pin
came within the range of his vision was only too
evident.
As Denning followed him Clay threw his cue on
the table and started to leave the room. Denning,
in a return of playfulness, caught the boy by the
shoulder and turned him so that they faced each
other.
"What's the matter with my scarf-pin?"
"I don't like it," Clay answered, as he covered his
eyes with his hand.
"Well, I don't like your face," the young rowdy
retorted, annoyed by the criticism.
Viola, alarmed at the occurrence which had now
taken on almost the character of a physical conflict,
went quickly from the room in search of her mother
and Mrs. Whipple. The boy, breaking from his tor
mentor, ran across the hallway and through the din
ing-room as Denning, with a view to intercepting him,
lurched into the library from which Justice Prentice
and Brookfield had just gone.
"J'ever see anything's funny as that? He don't
like my scarf-pin. Well, I don't like it, but my valet
put it on me, and what's the difference?"
Hardmuth, who had missed the explanation for the
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explosive conduct of the boy, followed Ellinger and
Denning.
"What was that?"
"My scarf-pin," answered Denning.
"Scarf-pin?"
"Yes; he pushed me away from him, and I said,
'What's the matter?' He said, 'I don't like your
scarf - pin '; 'and I said, 'Don't? I don't like your
face.'"
"That was very impolite, with a lady there," El-
linger said.
"Why should he criticise Tom's scarf-pin?" Hard-
muth asked, combatively.
"Exactly," continued Denning. "I said, T can
change my scarf-pin, but I don't like your face."
At this moment Clay entered from the dining-room
and moved toward the hallway.
"Where's Jack?" he paused to ask Ellinger.
"Saying good-night to some old gentleman below."
Denning grabbed the boy by the lapel of the coat
as he was going, and repeated, in a brow -beating
manner:
"And I don't like your face."
"That's all right, Mr. Denning." Clay tried to
pass him. "Excuse me."
"Excuse me," echoed Denning, as he held on to the
boy, and at the same time, with his disengaged hand,
drew the scarf-pin from his tie, "what's the matter
with that scarf-pin?"
"It's a cat's-eye," answered the boy, tremblingly,
"and I don't like them, that's all I don't like to
look at them."
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"Let him alone, Tom," Ellinger expostulated.
"Damned if he ain't scared of it!" laughed Denning,
waving the pin in annoying proximity to the boy's
face.
"Don't do that!" Clay screamed, in tones that were
audible through the hallways.
"It won't bite you, will it?" Hardmuth sneered, in
manifest contempt for the boy's weakness.
"It will bite him," Denning answered, pushing the
pin against Clay's cheek and barking in imitation of
a dog.
"Don't, I tell you don't!" screamed the boy.
"Bow-wow-wow!" persisted the drunkard.
The lad made a frantic effort to free himself from
Denning, and with both hands succeeded in pushing
him a step or two away. Denning, cheered on by
the applause and laughter of Hardmuth, as well as
by the mere physical excitement of the contest,
lurched toward the boy again, waving the objection
able pin before him. Clay turned to escape the
table was in his way. As his hands fell upon it one
of them mechanically clutched the large ivory paper-
cutter lying on the table. Without intent to injure,
with no motive but to escape, with nothing but the
instinctive resistance of a hunted animal, the boy
struck in the direction of his pursuer. The heavy
tusk of greater weight than an equal billet of green
oak caught Denning just above the temple. A
second and a third time Clay struck with the unrea
soning impulse of panic and defence. The drunkard
swayed a moment under the blows, and fell, an inert
mass, at the feet of Ellinger just as Brookfield, having
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dismissed his visitor and alarmed by the cries, came
hurriedly into the room. Brookfield saw the falling
figure; he saw the frightened and livid boy, scarcely
understanding what he had done and yet aghast at
what he comprehended. Jack called to him.
"He pushed that horrible cat's-eye right against my
face!" the boy cried, with trembling lips.
"What cat's-eye?"
"Only playing with him," Hardmuth answered,
with the bitterness of the prosecutor, as he stooped
and picked up the jewel "a scarf-pin."
Ellinger was kneeling over Denning, and tried to
lift his head. He now turned, and, in laconic phrase
ology most familiar to his hearers, said:
"He's out, Jack."
Brookfield also knelt beside him, critically examin
ing the stricken man.
"I didn't mean to hurt him," Clay lamented "real
ly I didn't mean that!"
"The hell you didn't!" Hardmuth accused, taking
the paper-cutter from the boy. "Why, you could kill
a bull with that ivory tusk!"
Jo and Harvey, the darky servants, had entered
the room. Mrs. Campbell, having been on an upper
floor, had not heard the cries of the boy, but had
decided to leave the house upon the report which
Viola had brought from the billiard-room. She had
now come to announce her departure.
"Wait a minute," her brother commanded. Then
speaking to the negroes, he said, "Help Mr. El-
linger put him on the window-seat give him some
air."
7 91
THE WITCHING HOUR
Brookfield pointed into the dining-room. Ellinger
and the darkies carried Denning from the library.
''What is it?" Mrs. Campbell inquired, startled at
the scene before her.
"An accident," Jack answered. "Keep Helen and
Viola out of these rooms."
"Hadn't we better go? Clay is with us."
"I can't go just now, Mrs. Campbell," Clay said,
following the figure of Denning as it was carried from
the room. "I hope it isn't serious--! didn't mean to
hurt him really."
"A quarrel?" Mrs. Campbell queried, looking from
her brother to Hardmuth.
There was a momentary pause as the men's eyes
followed the direction in which Denning had been
carried out. Ellinger now returned to Brookfield with
a single gesture of hopeless import.
"A murder!" 1, .ruth answered.
His reply was o^ eard by Mrs. Whipple and Viola
as they entered' tho . oom. Before they co^ld inquire
its meaning Clay, wild-eyed and terror-st .en, ame
running from the dining-room, calling as he saw h:'s
mother:
"I've killed him, mother! I've killed him!"
"Killed him! whom?"
"Tom Denning," Hardmuth made reply, in per
sistent accusation.
"But I never meant it!" Clay cried, pathetically.
"I just struck him, Jack struck wild!"
"With this," Hardmuth added, malevolently, hold
ing the ivory tusk bludgeon fashion.
"With that Oh, my boy!" And Helen took
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THE WITCHING HOUR
the trembling lad in her arms. Tears were in Viola's
eyes.
"That will do," said Brookfield, taking command
of the situation; "that will do, everybody."
The agitated group became for the moment obedi
ent and attentive.
" Lew, telephone Dr. Monroe it's an emergency case,
and to come in his dressing-gown and slippers."
Ellinger left the room. "Alice, I know you're not
afraid of a sick man or that sort of thing. Help
me and Jo." Brookfield put his arm about his sister
preparatory to leading her to where Denning's pros
trate form lay, turned, and, addressing his niece, said,
"Viola, you take Mrs. Whipple up-stairs and wait
there."
Hardmuth, craftily assuming a part in the general
atmosphere of action, started for the hall, saying as
he did so:
" I'll notify the police."
The words struck the women like a blow. Helen's
heart-broken moan was lost in the imperative " Stop!"
that rang out from Brookfield ; then, interposing him
self between Hardmuth and the doorway, he added,
in a tone of unmistakable menace:
"You'll stay just where you are!"
"Are you trying to hide this thing?" Hardmuth
challenged.
"The doctor will tell us exactly what this thing
is," Jack answered, with undiminished positiveness,
"and then the boy will have the credit himself of
notifying the police."
VII
nPHE testimony of eye-witnesses, all anxious to be
1 honest, is difficult to reconcile. The difficulty
increases with time, even though the anxiety to be
honest persists. Impressions grow dim, vivid mental
reflections get mistaken for actual happenings, prej
udice colors, discolors, or bleaches recollection ; things
heard are remembered as things seen; inaccuracies
repeated take on the authority of fact all this in
the testimony of eye-witnesses. Add to that the
emphasis and exaggeration of the fairest - minded
hearsay, and to this the distortion of intentional
misrepresentation, and we have the matrix in which
the public estimate of an occurrence is cast.
A murder in the gambling-house of Brookfield, al
though mainly dependent upon causes utterly un
connected with the business of the establishment,
was soon accepted as a natural consequence of that
business, as an unanswerable argument for the sup
pression of it, and also as an added reason for the
ostracism of the proprietor.
The game at Brookfield's closed.
The public attributed this to fear. The real cause
was Brookfield's sensitiveness and sympathy. An ir
reparable calamity had befallen the woman he loved.
Her son was to be tried for his life, because of an
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THE WITCHING HOUR
offence growing out of a situation for which he felt
himself measurably responsible. Viola, the niece
whom Brookfield loved with a tenderness exceeding
that of many a father, was suffering an affliction al
most equal to that of Helen herself.
During the first weeks of Clay's imprisonment, the
time covered by the notoriety and comment, by the
application for bail and its refusal, by the coroner's
inquiry and the indictment, Hardmuth had ap
proached Brookfield with a covert proposal to lessen
the rigor of the prosecution if given assurance that
Viola would accept him as a suitor. The arrange
ment had been suggested with an indirection of which
Hardmuth was a master, but this approach, skilful
as it was, precipitated a collision between him and
Brookfield that stopped all sentimental pretence on
Hardmuth's side and all hope in the mind of Brook-
field for any consideration at the hands of the prose
cution.
Brookfield's energies and resources were at once
conserved and applied to the task of liberating Clay
from the consequences of Denning's death.
The best legal talent was retained. The para
phernalia of the gambling - house was sold. Mrs.
Campbell and Viola were induced to give up their
own apartments and again make their home with
Brookfield. Helen, whose need to be near her son
made a protracted stay in Louisville probable, was
persuaded to join them. Their common affliction
united them in one intimate and sympathetic family
group.
The long delay necessary to the preparation of the
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case, both by the prosecution and by the defence, was
filled with weary days of corroding anxiety.
All that money and affection could provide in the
prison conditions as they then existed in Louisville was
procured for Clay. The old Jefferson Street jail was
not a sanitary structure. That part of the building
in which Clay was lodged was lighted and ventilated
only by a skylight above the court, around which ran
three tiers of cells, each tier opening onto an iron
gallery or balcony, on which the prisoners took their
daily exercise. The associates of the boy, during this
waiting period of incarceration, were two or three
men like himself, under indictment for capital offences,
and a varying number from thirty to fifty charged
with felonies and lesser crimes.
Through the influence of Brookfield and the sym
pathy of the jailer, Clay was permitted to have a lit
tle cell to himself. Permission was also given to fur
nish the cell with such simple necessities as the boy
had been accustomed to have, and to send in meals
superior to the usual prison fare from an adjacent
restaurant.
The most liberal construction in Clay's case was
also put upon the rules that governed visits to the
prisoners by their friends. At some time during every
day Viola and his mother called on him. There were
encouraging visits from the attorneys, and once or
twice each week Brookfield dropped in to cheer him.
Brookfield's time, however, in the main, was de
voted to securing such expert testimony as would
strengthen the contention of the defence, which the
lawyers had decided should rest upon the inherited
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THE WITCHING HOUR
physical aversion that Clay had for the cat's-eye. To
establish the existence of these idiosyncrasies, Brook-
field read all the books upon the subject of which the
conversation of the experts gave him any hint.
In the related field of psychology, which this read
ing opened up to him, Brookfield found that a fasci
nating advance had been made since the date of the
text-books he had perfunctorily read in his college
days.
Naturally superstitious as he was, with an imag
ination more than normally active, Brookfield found
himself standing on the threshold of a world un
known in the presence of a power, a knowledge of
which he believed would explain all that had been
mysterious and baleful in his life. It seemed to him
as though behind the screen of material appearance,
and behind the web of tangible events, there was a
force at work with an intent as definite as the purpose
of an artistic weaver an intent to combine appar
ently unrelated threads into figure, pattern, and de
sign a force throwing its willing, unconscious,
frightened, reluctant, or rebellious shuttles through
the warp of time, weaving with events its own robe,
through the form and texture and decoration of which
the spirit of things might be faintly apprehended. In
the hands of these forces it seemed to Brookfield that
he himself and all his friends and acquaintances were
but puppets.
No event, no material thing, seemed accident or
accidental.
The visit of the opera company that had brought
Hardmuth and Clay into relation and into opposition
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THE WITCHING HOUR
over Viola was a thread in the web of fate; his
own boyish desire for the paper-cutter two- and -
twenty years before was an immediate antecedent to
its readiness as a weapon when Clay was impelled to
strike; Helen's accidental dropping of it from the
table to the floor when Brookfield was proposing to
her was a notable intimation, by fate, that there
would be this interruption to the courtship. This
and a thousand other facts and incidents in his ca
reer seemed so closely interknit and articulated that
Brookfield felt himself helpless in a universe of steel.
He was in this condition of introspection and ap
prehension when he found one night, after a busy and
nerve-racking day of interviews, a somewhat sub
stantial packet on his table bearing the post-mark
"Washington." Brookfield opened it. The packet
contained a note from Justice Prentice and a book on
psychic phenomena, which the jurist on his visit had
promised to send him and now recommended to his
attention.
Brookfield read the book in one night. It was a
scientific treatise almost devoid of technical terms,
and addressed to the understanding of the layman.
It set forth in simple, convincing, and logical pro
cession a working hypothesis which gave him his first
tangible hold on the question that haunted him.
Granting the difference between various and per
haps equally valuable definitions of the two sides of
the human mind, the author of the book, for the sake
of clearness in the mental picture he wished his reader
to make, assumed that each individual was the pos
sessor of two minds. The one of these two minds the
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THE WITCHING HOUR
more in evidence and more consciously possessed, the
mind of our daily voluntary conduct and business, the
mind that holds communication with other minds
through the means of the five senses, he called the ob
jective mind.
This objective mind, with its five avenues of in
formation, approach, and communication, was the
temporary custodian, employer, teacher, and provider
for a second mind more enduring and more richly
stored than the objective mind ; more reliable also, in
that it had charge of all the automatic action already
possessed by the individual organism, and constantly
took under its care all conduct that became habitual
or automatic ; more powerful than the objective mind,
in that it never slept, never forgot, never tired; wiser
than the objective mind, in that it had access to every
other mind and to the knowledge of every other mind
on the same subjective plane as itself.
Brookfield had one mental quality that distinguish
ed him in a degree from most of his fellows. His
power of visualization was greater than theirs. Such
ideas as were capable of graphic representation he saw
in pictures ; ideas that might not be so represented he
saw in diagrams.
It is probable that this ability to form a clear picture
in the mind is the one that, according to the degree
of its possession, determines the degree of a man's
success. It is probable that the strongest individual
will in the world would accomplish but little if its
owner could form no conception of what he desired.
It is probable, on the other hand, that a thing desired
can be obtained by a man of very ordinary will power
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THE WITCHING HOUR
if a clear picture of that thing can be persistently
held in the mind.
"Where there's a will there's a way" is true only
when the will is guided by the light of a defined
desire.
Brookfield had a will. He had also the ability of
visualization. Along his chosen line Brookfield was
a success.
As he read the illuminating hypothesis of the author
whose book Prentice had sent him, his vivid concep
tion outshone the description in the volume. He saw
before him a picture of the sea. Over the deep bosom
of the water were billows, waves, and individual crests
separating into drops of blown spray. To his mind's
eye these drops and crests and waves and billows
symbolized the objective minds of individuals, fami
lies, communities, and peoples sprung from an ocean
of infinite mind of which each was part and with
which each and all had possible communication.
Brookfield's own mind by constitution, by habit,
and by a certain fallowness was most fertile soil for
an invited analogy of this kind. The pictured idea
took possession of him.
He sat alone in his library. His imagination made
the silence vocal with the hum of subtle and mys
terious power. On every side of him wherever his
gaze fell it encountered some object acquired in re
sponse to an apparently vagrant whim, yet now all of
these became intelligently eloquent and collaborative
of the message he was just apprehending. Brook-
field's habitual mental poise was for the moment too
disturbed to enable him to see that the tonal agree-
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THE WITCHING HOUR
ment between the objects was easily referable to the
one taste and temperament that had dictated their
choice and collection. When a lessening agitation
did permit the approach of this idea he saw in that
explanation itself only a more profound plan and pre-
arrangement.
Over the mantel of this room, as over the mantel in
the dining-room, was a marine painting built into the
wood-work a tossing sea with crests of spray.
Brookfield was startled, not so much to note that
the painted picture was the counterpart of the mental
picture he had conjured, as he was at his failure to
associate the painting and its mental reflection at the
first moment. This very dissociation gave the canvas
mystic importance and ambassadorial authority.
The room was lighted by the hooded electrolier
under which Brookfield had been reading. Its shade
threw a half-gloom over walls and ceiling, a half-
gloom made unstable and wavering by the flicker of
the open fire. From the big clock in the hall a soft
contralto bell struck two.
Beneath the painting on the mantel was a bronze
cast of the Antommarchi death-mask of Napoleon ; the
inert touch of the lower lip against the uncovered
teeth seemed trembling into the pronunciation of
fate. On the other side of the room a sculptured
Sphinx crouched on the book-shelves ; Brookfield had
brought it as a souvenir from the Nile. It had been
in its present place some fifteen years without ever
once living until now.
Over the door to the hallway was a marble bust of
Pallas, with the raven perched upon it; on another
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THE WITCHING HOUR
bookcase rested the Donatello head of Dante; a re
production of the well-known mask of Beethoven,
the mystic of melody, hung near by. Brookfield look
ed in turn upon these several objects. The profun
dity of the men whose masks and portraits were about
him ; the solemn riddle of the Sphinx ; the placidity of
the goddess of wisdom beneath the bird of doubt;
the circling, embracing, symbolizing infinitude of the
sea each spoke to him of the restful deep in which all
reposed; the infinite, all-wise Mind, watchful, com
municating, benign; the one force for which his mind
had been groping, the force behind the texture of
material appearance.
The objects in the room were related in significance,
not because his conscious taste had chosen them, but
because a power behind him wiser than himself had
done so a power to which he also bore expressive
relation.
Most men awaken so that is, through the recogni
tion of the significance of some important symbol,
whatever that symbol be : a thing or an event, a ban
ner or a bereavement.
The time was coming for Brookfield, as for all men,
when the vibrating wire in the electric lamp over his
table, or the embossed swirl on the cover of Khayyam,
would be as eloquent as the tragic face of the dead
emperor; when nothing in the universe, animate or
inanimate, would again be mute. But for the present
the objects about him were particular and accredited
messengers.
The truth which Brookfield felt he had grasped,
the truth reconnoitred by his recent psychological
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THE WITCHING HOUR
reading, the truth cogently expressed in the book
from Justice Prentice, the truth insinuated by the
objects of art with which he had surrounded him
self was, as he interpreted it, the essential oneness of
all life, the essentially same significance of all things.
By its light the years of what he had been pleased to
call intellectual improvement and growth in culture
seemed years of arrested development, even years of
retrogression nothing was of value that had not
made for spiritual unfoldment ; and as he reviewed his
life Brookfield felt that he had hitherto walked in
Cimmerian night.
For this new thought, this new conception of life
that possessed him, the house seemed small and
stifling. Brookfield took his hat and coat and went
noiselessly into the street, went from the sculptured,
the painted, and printed symbols in his room into the
chill and tonic air, under the denuded moving branches
of the trees through whose tracery and the etheric
blue the stars were shining in glittering kinship.
As these bright luminaries paled in the winter dawn,
Brookfield, physically weary but mentally and spirit
ually calmed, found himself pacing the sidewalk near
the jail wherein Clay was confined with so many
others for whom, in their error and misfortune, Brook-
field had in his heart a fresh compassion.
VIII
law is terrible in its earnestness. However
1 insignificant its various human instruments may
be, there is a compelling majesty about the spirit of
the law itself when once that spirit is invoked. The
detached juryman, unlettered, uninformed, simple
and primitive in his mental processes, less than un
important in his social usefulness or position, associ
ated with eleven of his kind, forms a body ominous
and imposing, when endowed with the legal and awe-
inspiring function of verdict.
The criminal court-room in Louisville compares
favorably in almost every respect with the cham
bers of its kind in America. It is sufficiently am
ple, adequately equipped, well ventilated. Few court
rooms in America, however, surpass it in cheerlessness.
Facing the judge's dais, six bleak windows and a
transom look upon the stucco wall of the old court
house; to the right, four equally cheerless windows
look on to the dead walls of the adjoining shops;
to the left, two still more cheerless windows look upon
an open court of dingy and painted brick; on the
wall behind the judge, and to either side of him,
similar windows look out upon the manufactur
ing establishments that flank this new chamber in
the annex. Dingy canvases in dingier gilt frames
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THE WITCHING HOUR
bear the almost stencilled faces of uncertain politi
cians.
The floor space of the room is divided by iron rail
ings into three compartments one end reserved for
white spectators, one end for negroes, while the trial
itself, with its actors, composed of prisoner, contend
ing counsel, judge, jurymen, and distinguished visi
tors, occupies the middle division. Behind the jury
men, whose backs are to the pen of the white spec
tators, a second rail some four feet from that of the
enclosure establishes a moral vacuum through which
no sinister material influence may touch one of the
insulated twelve.
The trial of the case of The People vs. Whipple was
a cause celbbre. The youth of the prisoner and his
respectable connections, his education, the unpro
voked character of his crime as the public understood
it $ the almost deliberate killing of a friend who had
only ridiculed him, and quite playfully at that, con
cerning his lack of skill at billiards; the promised
revelations of the interior of a notorious gambling-
house, always a place of curiosity to the newspaper
reader, together with other factors, combined to
stimulate an interest in the proceedings.
After the first day or two the distinction of the
prisoner's friends who were with him in the court
room, and especially the reported beauty of his sweet
heart, increased the general wish to be present.
Nor was there anything deterring in the reputation
of counsel. The victim had been the son of one of
Missouri's wealthiest packers. According to the
newspapers, the attitude of this man toward the ac-
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THE WITCHING HOUR
cused was one of great vengefulness. His money
had been freely offered to assist the attorneys for the
State in retaining associate counsel ; it had also been
used to secure the services of physicians of national
reputation who, it was understood, would testify in
rebuttal of certain other eminent specialists secured
by the defence.
Although the case for the people was ostensibly
in the hands of the prosecuting attorney, its direct
ing genius was that officer's assistant, Mr. Hardmuth.
The associated counsel for the defence were mis
led by the prosecution's apparent indifference to the
character of the jurymen during their selection.
These legal gentlemen even began to hope that some
covert leniency was to be indulged in by the repre
sentatives of the State.
It was Brookfield who, sitting with the family dur
ing those two or three preliminary days, and occa
sionally consulting with the lawyers for the defence,
had discovered what ultimately proved to be the
guiding intention in the prosecution's selection of the
jury. This discovery may have been due to Brook-
field's keen knowledge of human nature, surpassing,
perhaps, that of the counsel; it may have been due
to an especial knowledge of the character of Hard
muth; or it may have been due, as Brookfield him
self began to suspect, to some subtle telepathic rela
tion between the prosecutor and himself. But what
ever the means of the discovery, the fact developed
that Hardmuth, by persistency of intention and by the
failure of an opposing preparation on the part of the
defence, had secured a jury singularly dull and no-
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ticeably phlegmatic a jury to whom an appeal upon
any ground of alleged nervous excitability would be
made in vain. The appreciation of this fact, when
Brookfield had called it to their attention, caused more
consternation in the ranks of the defence's counsel than
any other element in the case. Eliminate the con
sideration due to an inherited nervous idiosyncrasy,
and the defence was left without a single extenuating
plea.
The outline of the State's case removed all doubt
as to their method. According to the calm, judicial,
regretful utterances of the State's attorney, the twelve
men in the double row of tilting swivel-chairs were
called together to hear the story of a deliberate and
spiteful killing a killing of one friend by another,
who had been frequently a beneficiary of the man he
had made his victim, who had been frequently the
antagonist of that man in games of chance, for which
games the two had often met in the house where the
tragedy occurred. The prisoner had been a uniform
loser, had lost sums considerable to himself, but of
no importance to his victim who had won them. This
regularity of loss and envy of the prisoner for the
better fortune, both at cards and in life, which the
dead man had enjoyed had built up in the heart of
the prisoner a hate of his companion as deep and as
enduring as it had been gradual in growth; it was a
hate none the less terrible because its object was un
aware of its existence. The poor boy who had been
killed on the night in question had indulged only in
such simple raillery as one friend directs against an
other inept in any game of skill, and especially where
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there were ladies among the spectators. This rail
lery was of a character that would have been accepted
as evidence of friendliness by any man in the jury-
box it would have called for nothing more severe
than a retort in kind, or some romping push with the
shoulder, some slap on the back, or other rough play
fulness. The man now dead, the former friend of the
prisoner, had been slightly intoxicated that would
be shown by the State and would be admitted by
the defence. He was in a condition in which even
had his aggression not been friendly, even had his
wish been to inflict bodily injury upon the prisoner,
he could not have been dangerous to the prisoner
himself, who had not been drinking on that evening,
who was, as the jury might see, a young man of
athletic build, and who had been at the time sur
rounded by several persons more friendly to him
self than to his victim. The prosecution would show
that the prisoner had been in no peril whatever,
that he could not have acted in self-defence, that he
could not have thought he was so acting, that the
motive had been hate, that the intent had been mur
der, that the weapon had been lethal and deadly.
When the taking of testimony was begun the bare
facts of the tragedy were simply outlined. That at
one time in his annoyance Denning had waved a
scarf-pin in front of the prisoner the prosecution itself
established. The scarf-pin, being a small object, was
passed to the jury so that each member of that body
might see it for himself. The cat's-eye was handled
with bovine indifference by Hardmuth's twelve citi
zens. Their first impression of it was potent in its
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THE WITCHING HOUR
results, because received before any suggestion of its
peculiar quality, if it possessed a peculiar quality,
was made to their healthy and ordinary minds.
The paper-cutter, another exhibit for the State,
was passed to the jury. This was done, however,
after it had been shown that the paper-cutter had
lain upon the library table in its accustomed place,
familiar to the prisoner, to which, at one stage in the
so-called quarrel, he had directly crossed. It was
shown that when the prisoner had taken the paper-
cutter from the table he had taken it by the lighter
end and not by the handle, and had by this very
selection turned it into the powerful weapon which
it was. The twelve citizens in the jury-box were in
the main not uninformed in the choice of weapons,
and were not unappreciative of the value of this one
as they passed it along their lines.
Lew Ellinger had been impatient to reach the wit
ness-stand. He had been delighted that he was
among the witnesses summoned by the prosecution;
he had felt that half a dozen words from him, given
with the fervor that he would lend them, would im
mediately clear the boy in the mind of any unpreju
diced listener. The State's attorney, a much younger
man than Ellinger, treated him with a curtness
one would almost say with a rigor to which Ellinger
as a Southern gentleman was not accustomed. The
judge, a much older man than the State's attorney,
and one with whom Ellinger had frequently fore
gathered in convivial association, sustained the con
duct of the attorney with an inflexibility difficult to
understand in a friend. It was only when the lawyer
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THE WITCHING HOUR
for the defence took Ellinger in hand for his cross-
examination, a process which Lew had understood
was the epitome of impertinence and uncharitable-
ness, that Lew received anything like the urbanity
and gentility which had always made him cultivate
gentlemanly associates.
It was during this cross-examination that Lew
found his opportunity to utter many of the polished
phrases which he had rehearsed during the prepara
tory months. Some of the best and most impassioned
of these were almost spoiled by the interruption of the
State's attorney. However much Ellinger had ad
vanced the case of the defence, he certainly knew
when he left the witness-box that no doubt existed
of his loyalty to the prisoner.
As Lew minutely reviewed his testimony during
that day and the next, he had sudden gleams in which
he distinguished places where it might have been im
proved. He remembered several interruptions by
the State's attorney which might have been crush-
ingly rebuked if he had had the composure to con
struct the replies which now came to him in his calmer
moments. But with it all there was only one line
in his entire testimony, dragged from him by the
prosecution in its redirect examination, which he
regretted. In a moment of excitability, and perhaps
personal vanity, he had said that a cat's-eye pushed
into his own face in the manner in which the cat's-eye
in evidence had been pushed into Clay's would not
have excited him to any frenzy.
Hardmuth, another witness for the State, with a
clarity most impressive to the jurymen, and with
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the authority of a State's officer, an authority which
every touch in the surroundings tended to augment,
testified to the bare and uncolored facts of the tragedy.
He had seen the commencement of the quarrel; he
had seen the prisoner leave the room ; he had seen the
victim also leave the room and go into a second room
in which the prisoner was not ; he had seen the prisoner
re-enter this second room and rejoin the victim; he
had seen the difference, a quarrel on one side and a
banter on the other, resumed; he had seen the prisoner
take the ivory tusk in evidence and repeatedly strike
his victim.
In the cross-examination of Hardmuth the defence
elicited only the fact that in the general chorus of
outcries which followed the enacting of the tragedy
the witness himself had characterized the deed as
murder, had himself secured the weapon, had started
to notify the police, and had been stopped in that
attempt by the proprietor of the house in which the
murder occurred.
With this the prosecution rested the first day of
the trial proper closed. There was little popular
sympathy with the prisoner, except such indirect
sympathy as the spectacle of his weeping mother and
sweetheart created. There was little belief in the
minds of the legal profession that a successful defence
could be established, and small doubt in the minds of
the experienced reporters of the press that a convic
tion would be secured.
The close of this first day of the trial was a sad one
for the little group composing the defence and as
sociated with it. The boy himself was too intelligent
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to be deceived by the reassurance of his attorneys,
but was also too grateful for what was being done
in his behalf not to take kindly the well-meant efforts
of his attorneys at deception. There was sustaining
companionship in the company of his mother and of
Viola, but the quality of comfort that supplied the
nearest approach to contagious courage he got from
the strong and silent grip of Brookfield and through
his determined eye.
It was not in Helen's heart to leave her boy while
it was possible to be with him, and although both
Brookfield and the lawyers advised against it, she ac
companied him, with the consent of his custodians,
on his walk from the court-room to the jail. This
short journey took the party out-of-doors and through
the alleyway known as Congress Street. Along this
pavement the little procession made its way, Helen
walking at Clay's side, with Viola and Brookfield just
behind. The curious were there to note the passing
of the prisoner, but they were remarkably respectful
in the presence of the ladies, and it was character
istic of Kentucky manhood that even the loungers in
front of the hotel and the cafe removed their hats in
courteous silence as the party passed.
The evening was spent at Brookfield's rooms in a
general council of the family, the attorneys, and the
experts. The testimony of the day was reviewed,
the plan of the case for the defence gone over for the
hundredth time, and a programme for the coming
day arranged.
It was the opinion of Colonel Bailey, who led the
defensive forces, and the opinion concurred in by his
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THE WITCHING HOUR
colleagues and Brookfield, that nothing was to be
gained by wearying the court or jury in combating
facts that the prosecution had established, with the
exception of the single false assumption that a hatred
had been built up in Clay's heart for Denning. Brook-
field's own testimony would show, furthermore, that
where one man lost and another gained, the gain and
loss were not necessarily reciprocal, but that the loser
lost to the house or its proprietor, and that the winner
likewise won from the house or its proprietor. The
principal thing to be established was the existence of
Clay's aversion to the cat's-eye, his inability to look
at the jewel and retain his self-control. The exist
ence of similar idiosyncrasies, of which record was pre
served in the medical books, was to be told by the
experts. The loss of self-control in one so afflicted
was also to be established. This line of defence fre
quently reiterated, this programme several times
rehearsed, induced a semblance of hope in Helen's
heart by the time the conference adjourned and she
retired for the night. Long after that, however,
Colonel Bailey, Brookfield, and Ellinger sat together
in the library, a gloomy trio filled with foreboding for
the morrow's development.
On the witness-stand next day Helen told of the
existence of the same inexplicable abhorrence of the
jewel on her own part, of one or two illnesses which,
when a young woman, she had undergone as the re
sult of looking at such a jewel, of medical treatment
for the susceptibility, of its partial cure. She told
also of the inherited loathing in her boy, of her grief
at the discovery of the same, of the care with which
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THE WITCHING HOUR
she had guarded him from exposure to the influence
of the jewel, and of his singular behavior upon the
several occasions when it had accidentally come to
his attention.
Brookfield and the attorneys saw with a rising hope
the effect of her story upon her listeners. Back of
all she said was the simple wish of a true woman to
earnestly tell the truth. There was no attempt at
effect, there was not the slightest inharmonious ex
pression, no touch of vehemence nothing whatever
but a few sad pages of family history pathetically and
reluctantly revealed.
Whether by his own request or as a result of his
chief's recognition of his ability for the task, the cross-
examination of Helen was intrusted to Hardmuth.
The witness and her friends all were prepared for an
exhibition of rudeness and of brutality. They were
disappointed. With a suavity and deference that
rapidly won for him the esteem of the jury, Hardmuth
began his interrogations.
"You were treated for this susceptibility of which
you have spoken, Mrs. Whipple, this remarkable and
inconvenient susceptibility, by a physician thoroughly
familiar with its existence?"
"Yes, sir."
"By your family physician, was it not?"
"My mother's family physician yes, sir."
"Yes, I meant your mother's family physician. I
believe you said that this physician had treated your
mother for a similar susceptibility, or idiosyncrasy, as
it has been called?"
"Yes, sir."
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"You were aware of the existence of this dislike to
a cat's-eye jewel on the part of your mother?"
"Yes, sir."
"You have frequently heard her speak of it?"
"I have."
"And the physician that had treated her also treat
ed you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you mind telling us his name?"
"No, sir Dr. Lane."
"Do you see the gentleman in the court-room?"
"Dr. Lane is dead."
"Oh well, that's too bad. He died recently?"
"No, sir Dr. Lane has been dead some years."
"Do you mind telling the jury, Mrs. Whipple, how
old you were at the time of Dr. Lane's death or
about how old?"
"I think I was seventeen years of age when Dr.
Lane died."
"At that time you were completely cured of this
difficulty?"
"Yes, sir."
"You say this same idiosyncrasy made its appear
ance in your son?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sufficiently to require medical attention?"
"Yes, sir."
"What physician treated him?"
"My husband was a physician himself."
"That hardly answers my question, Mrs. Whipple;
do you mind telling the name of the physician who
treated your son for this inherited trouble?"
5
THE WITCHING HOUR
"He was treated by his father, Dr. Whipple."
"By any other physician?"
"Not that I remember."
"No specialist was called in?"
' 4 No, sir none was needed. Dr. Whipple was him
self one of the most skilled physicians of Philadelphia."
' ' I have no doubt of that. Did your husband make
a speciality of nervous troubles?"
"No, sir Dr. Whipple was a general practitioner."
"That is all, Mrs. Whippte."
Hardmuth smiled.
The defence, in its conference, had decided that it
would be wise to put Viola on the witness-stand to
testify to the degree of the annoyance which Denning
had inflicted upon Clay. It was believed that in ad
dition to the girl's testimony her great beauty would
strongly influence the sympathies of the jury, and this
was the evident result of her appearance.
Hardmuth, in his cross-examination of Viola, put
but one interrogation.
"Your relation to the prisoner, Miss Campbell, is
that of fiancee, is it not ? that is, you are engaged to
marry this young man?"
"I am."
"That's all."
The experience of the battery of experts provided
by the defence was not unlike the experience of all
medical experts in stoutly contested murder cases.
When an expert was insecure and uninformed he
became ridiculous; when another was master of his
subject the attorneys spread about his testimony and
about the hypothetical question which induced it such
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THE WITCHING HOUR
a cuttle-fish obscurity that the jurymen were glad to
escape from the troubled mental waters into the clear
er region of shallow ignorance. This part of the case
for the prosecution was conducted by a new-comer in
the office of the State's attorney a young man of pro
found medico-legal attainment, whose services it was
understood were compensated by the money of the
elder Denning.
The expert medical testimony provided by the de
fence was combated by testimony and contrary opin
ion given by specialists of equal importance who were
summoned by the State.
When these gentlemen were out of the way, Brook-
field was recalled by the prosecution. The State's at
torney, prompted by Hardmuth, said to him :
"Mr. Brookfield, the young lady who testified here
earlier in the trial, Miss Campbell, is related to you ?"
"She is my niece."
"Your sister's child?"
"Yes, sir my sister's child."
"Is the young lady's father living?"
"No, sir."
"She is entirely in the care of her mother?"
"Not entirely, sir; the young lady is not without
my protection, such as that may be."
"Are you her guardian, Mr. Brookfield?"
"I act as such."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that I never have been legally appointed
her guardian, but I try to discharge the duties of a
guardian."
"That is what I supposed. You were informed
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THE WITCHING HOUR
concerning this engagement of your niece to the
prisoner?"
"I was."
"You knew, of course, that he was a patron of
your gambling establishment?"
"I knew that he played in my house yes."
"You considered him a young man of fit character
to marry your niece?"
"I did."
"And this unfortunate position in which he now
finds himself involved has that in any way changed
your opinion?"
"It has not."
In the summing up Hardmuth opened for the prose
cution. He began with a misleading show of f air-
ness i he complimented the jury upon their atten
tion j he sympathized with them in the difficulty of
the task they were called upon to perform; he em
phasized the gratitude which the community would
feel toward them for the service they were rendering'
explained in simple language the condition of the
civilization under which they were living, the neces
sity of law, the transcendent claims of the community
over the individual. He then asked them to demand
of the individual only the ordinary human qualities,
and to dismiss from their minds any prejudice they
had against the prisoner because of the fact that he
had frequently played for money in a professional
gambling-house, to lay upon himself, the speaker,
any blame or reprehension they might feel for such
conduct, because he, a much older man, had frequent
ly offended in this manner, if to take part in a
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THE WITCHING HOUR
game of chance were a real offence against public
morals. Hardmuth then explained with almost kin
dergarten simplification the conduct of a trial the
needlessness of dwelling upon points upon which there
was no dispute; the value of directing the jury's en
tire attention to the points that were at issue that
is to say, only those points in the entire controversy
about which the State and the defence could not
agree. So far as he himself was able to see, and he
had a trained observation of such disputes, the only
point at issue was whether the prisoner had been so
excited by the sight of a cat's-eye that he was not
responsible for his acts. If such a condition existed
at the time of the killing, it meant an attack of
emotional insanity ; if such a susceptibility still exist
ed in the prisoner, there was a resident tendency to
be emotionally insane whenever the same provoking
cause should again be presented. If that were true,
it was indeed a grave condition ; if that were true, it
was, and should be, a matter of the most profound
uneasiness to his relatives and friends a matter of
the gravest concern to the young sweetheart who had
so bravely testified in his behalf.
In his long experience in the court he had seldom
seen a more attractive, a gentler, or a more admirable
young lady than this witness. There was not upon
the jury a man so dull as not to understand how the
uncle of this young lady, even though not her legally
constituted guardian, should wish to act in that
capacity.
It was easier to understand how a mother should
do for a son all that this mother had done in the court-
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THE WITCHING HOUR
room than it would be to understand her failure to
do so much.
The sweetheart's interest was equally natural; in
fact, Hardmuth's difficulty concerning the young
lady's attitude would have been much greater if he
had been called upon to explain on her part an indif
ference to the boy's position.
A life was at stake. The jury were to consider
that.
Hardmuth talked on this part of his theme with
almost the impressive fervor that would have been
expected from the defence. He was not going to
say roughly that the mother had testified falsely, but
he was going to submit that any mother in that posi
tion could not fail to say anything which in her be
lief would make for the safety of her son.
The testimony of the experts, in kindness to the
jury, Hardmuth was inclined to dismiss. Nothing
had been said by them, no testimony had been given
by them, for which they were not to be amply com
pensated; and nothing had been said by any one of
them that had not been diametrically controverted
by gentlemen equally eminent, gentlemen much more
disinterested, and in a very much more difficult posi
tion, because it is much easier to give testimony in
the defence of a man than it is to give testimony in
the defence of a community. The principal thing for
the jury to consider was the probability of this idio
syncrasy existing in the prisoner. Hardmuth him
self had no doubt that it had existed to some extent
in the mother; such ideas, as had been shown by the
testimony of the experts both for the defence and
I2O
THE WITCHING HOUR
for the prosecution, were frequently concomitants of
hysteria; but as some of the doctors had testified,
and as all of the twelve intelligent men themselves
knew, hysteria was peculiarly a feminine luxury.
Hysterical men were unusual. In the case of the
mother, the idiosyncrasy in question had disappeared
as soon as the doctor who had discovered it in the
grandmother had himself ceased to live. Its sup
posed reappearance in the boy was perhaps a piece
of childish imitation built up from fireside gossip
of the family. The boy's susceptibility had never
been considered as sufficiently serious, even by the
father of the boy, to summon the assistance of a
specialist; and as the jury had heard several of the
eminent specialists on both sides of the case testify,
it was unusual, if not almost unheard of, for a physi
cian to treat a member of his own family in a serious
ailment.
Recurring to the testimony of Viola, he took up
the possible effect of the young lady's appearance
upon the jury. The jury were men they were ex
traordinary men, if he might be permitted to say so
extraordinary men even in that community of ex
traordinary manhood. It might have escaped the
attention of even the gentlemen themselves, but he
now asked them to note that they made a body
which would be a valuable addition to any military
company or to any athletic association. Whatever
accompanying intelligence this physical development
carried with it, it surely carried with it a certain senti
mental susceptibility. As men, now that he had
called their attention to this fact, he asked them to
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THE WITCHING HOUR
put their judgment in charge over their emotions, and
in their duty to the State to rise superior to such
influences.
The young and beautiful witness of whom he was
speaking was in her way quite as unusual a physical
specimen as any member of the jury ; she was, also,
very intelligent. She was old enough to know what
a blight the alleged inherited tendency in the prisoner
would be in a husband, yet, fully informed as she was,
that blight became no bar to their intended marriage.
One might attribute that to a quixotic willingness for
self-sacrifice on the part of an infatuated girl; but
what of the uncle, her guardian ? Mr. Brookfield was
not an emotional party; on the contrary, he was a
man of wonderful self-possession, a man of wide ex
perience, a man skilled in estimating men; he was,
moreover, Kentuckian enough to understand the
value of hereditary qualities, the value of sound pro
genitors and their relation to possible progeny. How
had this alleged mental taint affected him or his de
cision to give his niece to the prisoner in marriage?
Not at all. Even this killing, for which the prisoner
stood on trial as the alleged consequence of this men
tal trait, had in no wise altered his decision to permit
his lovely niece to become the wife of this defective
person!
The jury must be forced to the conclusion at which
the speaker had himself arrived : the friends and ac
quaintances of the prisoner regarded his mental af
fliction, if a mental affliction really existed, as too
slight to interfere with any of his plans in life, and
as of only sufficient importance to serve as an excuse
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THE WITCHING HOUR
in the evasion of the law. That it was a trivial and
insufficient excuse he had no doubt the serious men
to whom he addressed himself would at once perceive.
But assume that the speaker was mistaken ; assume
that this terrible blight, fraught with such heart-rend
ing consequences, really was there; assume that it was
ineradicable, that it had existed in a grandmother,
had been transmitted to her daughter, had now, in
turn, been transmitted to a son, when was this fatal
heritage to cease ? If the jury found the young man
not guilty of the crime of which he had been charged,
if in their wisdom they were to set him at liberty,
did any of them doubt that the marriage planned
between the prisoner and this emotional girl would
take place? Would a verdict of insanity be truly
merciful? Would it be an act of kindness to the
young man himself? Would it be a chivalrous gen
erosity to the young woman to make it possible for
these two to be joined in wedlock ? Would it not only
be sowing the wind that they might reap the whirl
wind?
That, however, was its very narrowest considera
tion, the consideration of these two. What of the
wider consideration, the protection of the community,
that duty for which this jury had been assembled,
that first and most important duty which they had
sworn to discharge? For his own part, Hardmuth
failed to see that the jury in their choice were not
between the horns of a dilemma either this dis
position to emotional insanity did not exist, in which
case it was not a valid plea in his defence, or it did
exist, in which case it was all the greater reason to
9 123
THE WITCHING HOUR
protect the community against the prisoner and his
kind.
With this presentation of his case, Hardmuth closed.
There was a murmur in the court-room ominously
like approval. There was a stir in the jury-box, and
a disposition on the part of the jurymen to look at
the judge or at the attorneys for the State rather
than into the faces of the little group that represented
the defence.
Colonel Bailey, for the prisoner, made an able ad
hominem appeal. He made an able review of the
expert testimony. He made a strong plea for the
reasonable doubt that any juryman might entertain,
but there was in the court-room a subtle atmosphere
impressing all that the task of the defence was uphill
work.
More formidable than any testimony, more baneful
than any evidence for the prosecution, was the stolid,
animal, earthy quality of the jury which Hardmuth
had so shrewdly secured and counted on. The only
noticeable effect upon them had been produced by
Viola's appearance, and Hardmuth, with his knowl
edge of human nature, partly instinctive, largely
acquired, had skilfully offset that effect by dwell
ing upon the impending marriage of Viola and the
prisoner.
Deep in the composition of every normal healthy
man there is a survival of the primitive animal, a
survival of the instinct that formerly made the male
of every species belligerent at the sight of any female
of that species taken by another male. It is a sub-
structural if a melancholy fact that few bridegrooms
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THE WITCHING HOUR
in public weddings have the sincere and unrestrained
well-wishes and admiration of the male members of
the congregation. It is a fact known to most attor
neys skilled in the practise of the criminal law that
no jury of men, however brutal themselves or in
clined to like offences, can be found to sympathize
with a prisoner charged with the forcible appropria
tion of a woman. This is not due to the jury's in
dividual or collective stock of virtue so much as to
the survival of a fine and primitive animal egoism.
Upon this instinct Hardmuth had relied; its deep
current he had skilfully touched and stirred. A ma
jority of the jury were unreasonably, immovably an
tagonistic to the prisoner.
The closing speech for the prosecution was short.
The jury retired. Word came from their room that
there was little prospect of an agreement at ten
o'clock that night, and the Court, which had taken a
recess, adjourned until the following morning, leav
ing the members of the Brookfield household to a
night of harrowing suspense.
The verdict in the morning was "Guilty." The
wise attorneys in charge of the prisoner's case believed
that they had saved sufficient exception* to the
ruling of the Court that the Court had made errors
enough to give them an appeal.
'"PHE trial of Whipple, and especially the testi-
1 mony of an assistant prosecuting attorney, es
tablished beyond further contention the frequently
reiterated charge made by the reform newspaper that
gambling was openly conducted in the city of Louis
ville. It established also the negligence of the police
in this connection, and more especially the negligence
of the district attorney's office if not, as the press was
more than hinting, the collusion of that office in this
nefarious condition of things. Hardmuth's explana
tion of his own participation was that, as an officer of
the law, he was gathering evidence. The support of
this assumption necessitated a fairly rigorous cam
paign against the gambling-houses.
Brookfield's was already dark; the frank para
phernalia of the establishment had been sold or dis
posed of. Once or twice a week, at irregular intervals
and unfixed times, there was what Brookfield called
a gentleman's game, when a few of the older patrons
and his intimate friends sat down to a game of poker,
as they might have done at some of their clubs.
Gambling proper, however, with its full excitement
and allure, was for the time diplomatically inter
rupted in all of Louisville's professional establish
ments.
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This condition of affairs was a severe deprivation
for Ellinger. Lew's interests in life were few, but were
inversely intense. These interests included the race
track ; the prize-ring ; the theatre on its vaudeville side
and in its reminiscent aspect ; the fluctuation of the
stock-market in so far as that fluctuation affected the
quotation of a single railroad stock ; the American As
sociation of Professional Baseball Clubs; the show-
window display of certain importing tailors; the
afternoon parade on Fourth Street, particularly on
Saturday after the matin6e ; the opening of the hunt
ing season, not because of Lew's participation therein,
but because of the superiority of the flavor of fresh
game over that of the cold-storage supply; the con
servation of one or two dwindling supplies of a cer
tain vintage of bourbon; his diurnal pink for the
button -hole and somebody's eau de quinine for the
hair; but first, last, and continuously his greatest in
terest was the professional game of hazard known as
faro. To take this from him was to make of Lew,
in his own language, "a widow and an orphan."
With faro eliminated Lew's mind had more time at
its disposal than its degree of activity demanded.
The world grew gray, the universe seemed a com
plicated machine for the production of sorrow.
Lew's associates and nearest acquaintances were
men who, like himself, felt particularly aggrieved by
the drastic action of the authorities ; men who, like him
self, were more than indignant at Hardmuth's deser
tion and his betrayal of their interests ; men naturally
watchful for additional grounds of criticism of their
common enemy. Hardmuth's conduct of the Whipple
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trial took its place in their bill of grievances. Lew's
own resentment of this part of Hardmuth's record
made him doubly sympathetic toward the members
of Brookfield's home. Nor was his sympathy unac
ceptable to Helen, in whose greater trouble any dis
position to criticise Lew's past social record or present
standing disappeared.
Lew was a welcome visitor. As a frequent escort
to both Helen and Viola, he began in a measure to
fill the void which in that department of usefulness
had been created by Clay's enforced absence.
In times of deep and persistent sorrow there are
few companions more acceptable than a loyal, unde
manding, mature, mediocre friend one whose vanity
is not offended by long silences, whose watchful
ness prompts to small and unimportant services,
whose confidence is unquestioning, and whose punc
tuality and dependability banish friction from the
small affairs of daily existence. Lew regarded the
position in which the ladies found themselves as in
directly attributable to the business of a fraternity
of which he was an open and avowed associate. His
present loyalty, among its other qualities, was there
fore fraternal.
Such entertainment as Lew was competent to sug
gest was exactly of that variety most salutary in its
character for Helen and Viola. It uniformly de
manded some physical exertion, an interest in ma
terial things, an attention to the outside world as
opposed to speculation and introspection. It was to
ride in the automobile, to visit this or the other farm
of thoroughbreds, or to make the acquaintance of the
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excellence of some road-house cuisine. On such ex
cursions Lew systematically devoted himself to Viola
or Mrs. Campbell, or both, and thus left Helen the
fairly uninterrupted society of Jack.
During all this long and trying period Brookfield
astonished Helen by the considerate delicacy of his
attitude and bearing. Her thoughts were diverted
from rather than invited to any mutual sentimental
relation. Brookfield, while something more than a
friend, was studiously less than suitor. He seemed
instinctively to divine that in this period of Clay's
peril Helen would not only regret any thought she
might be induced to bestow on her own future hap
piness, but would remember unfavorably any attempt
on the part of another to so direct her attention.
If Jack were careful of her physical or mental health
it was that she might have strength to devote to her
boy. The many thoughtful acts that were done in
her behalf were apparently prompted by Mrs. Camp
bell; the numerous expenditures made necessary by
her presence and for her comfort, entertainment, and
diversion seemed always incurred by Mrs. Campbell.
That hitherto unreliable and flighty lady was sud
denly endowed with masculine prevision, generosity,
and executive ability.
This indirect service could not fail of appreciation
by a woman of Helen's delicate fibre rendered acutely
sensitive by the recent cumulative tragic events.
The more unkind the world seemed, the more generous
Jack appeared; the closer and more inexorable the
menace of the law, the more wonderful the interpos
ing courage of Jack's defence; the more vulnerable
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she and hers became, the more priceless his pro
tection.
We grow in character through service. Brookfield
himself was happily conscious of a spiritual growth.
With every unselfish effort he felt an accession not
only of compensating but of compounded power. He
felt, too, an increasing calm. Something of this calm
he had always possessed and to an enviable degree,
but heretofore it had been the sufficing calm of poise
and self-control.
This increased calm, whether because it was of
another origin or whether reserve and surplus of power
always so act, he found to his surprise had a com
pelling quality. Men of contrary minds seemed to
fall easily into the line of his wishes, not through any
expression or any argumentative presentation of his
desire, but by its silent and serene tenure.
In his mental search for the source of the power
residing in himself, Brookfield came again upon his
larger conception of the interrelation of life, his re
cently acquired and developed philosophy plainly
religious in its character. When he held in associa
tion the fact of his newly accepted belief in the one
ness of life, and the truth by him more recently noted,
that any expenditure of force in the unselfish service
of others was apparently repaid, and in larger quan
tity, his active imagination began reaching for some
explanation of this apparent repayment, some work
ing hypothesis that his reason might approve.
Why did an effort, physical or mental, made with a
purely selfish end in view tire him more than a similar
effort spontaneously prompted by his desire to help
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another? Why did the increase of skill or facility
acquired in such selfish occupation seem measurably
less than the skill or facility acquired in his disin
terested efforts?
If this relation between the character of his efforts
and the reflex action of those efforts upon himself
really existed, Brookfield felt that a natural law uni
versal in its operation must govern that relation. He
felt that his experience could not be unique, that
all who were working unselfishly for others, working
without personal vanity or the hope of personal re
ward, working with love as a sole motive, must have,
like him, an accession thereby of spiritual strength
and ability.
There were men and women in Louisville, as there
were in every community, whose lives were vital, with
altruistic purpose. Certain of these were known to
Brookfield by repute, observation, or contact, and as
his thought now singled them out he saw that each
was animate with an uncommon strength. Looking
nearer home, he realized that Helen in her devoted
service to Clay had shown an activity and an en
durance of which no previous chapter in her life gave
hint; and that expenditure of force, instead of lead
ing to an expected collapse, resulted in an astonish
ing reinforcement. Viola also, under the same stim
ulus, was exhibiting equally unsuspected power, a like
endurance and a similar increase of strength where
depletion had been looked for.
What was the secret of this energy? From what
region did it come ? There seemed no merely physio
logical explanation of it; in his own case Brookfield
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was sure that no material explanation would suffice.
It would not do to submit an analogy between the
training of a muscle of his arm, for example, and the
training of some mental faculty the growth of which
might account for the added power of which he was
progressively aware. The force within himself was
deeper than intellection at least, was quite indepen
dent of all conscious mental action ; and when he had
unreservedly lent himself to its expression it seemed
to flow through him as through an outlet suddenly
discovered and as from a reservoir of inexhaustible
storage.
This figure, once suggested to the powerfully graphic
mind of Brookfield, quickly shaped itself into a picture
illustrative of the hypothesis he sought :
Back of the visible universe as it presented itself to
his mind Brookfield saw an infinite, intelligent force
pressing for expression. He saw men and women as
so many avenues through which the force might flow.
He saw it flowing freely and more freely through
those who submitted themselves to its action. Where
avarice would retain the flow to selfish ends he saw
the force arrested and the man, no longer normal to its
current, clogged and stifled with the sediment of ac
cumulation, the force itself withdrawn to other chan
nels. Where craft and ambition would misdirect and
apply the force, he saw it measurably lessened, the
agent distorted and misshapen.
Brookfield smiled at the simplicity of the picture he
had conjured, the childishness of it. He remembered
that every inspirational fanatic who had become a
public nuisance, if not a menace, had considered him-
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self a passive medium to the will of a force divine and
infinite. Better remain a practical gambler, sordidly
but sanely dickering for immunity with corrupt of
ficials, than reform in a hospitality to such vagaries as
this.
Brookfield as he sat there meditating in his library
laughed aloud. He was the only auditor of his laugh,
and as auditor he was not fully pleased. The laugh
had a discomforting artificiality it was not his own.
Brookfield felt that there was another presence in the
room . . .
He looked quickly about.
He walked to the doorway and turned the electric
switch, thereby doubling the light in the hall a glance
up and down the respective stairways and then he
came back, turning off the added light as he did so.
The library was unpleasantly shadowy. The sense
of another presence persisted. . . . Over his shoulders
and through his scalp there crept that tingle he had
felt at Macauley's, when Justice Prentice had first
looked at him, and again on the occasion of Prentice's
visit to this room. Brookfield reached to the wall and
turned the nearest switch. The hood of lamps over
the Corot threw their light on the canvas and its re
flection dispelled the shadows from the corner of the
room. . . . There was nothing to be seen but the
familiar objects the paintings on their background
of garnet velvet, the rows of books, the inert face of
the dead emperor, the Dante, the lidless eyes of the
Sphinx in its patient vigil.
He crossed to the dining-room, passing over that
end of the rug from which Denning's body had been
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lifted just after Clay had killed him. The memory
added nothing to his agitation on the contrary, it
rather steadied him, being part of the tangible problem
in which he was involved.
Brookfield turned on the light in the dining-room.
No one was there. From the sideboard a thousand
facets danced their elaborate tribute to good cheer.
One stately decanter gleamed orange and amber in
its lower half. It invoked a thought of Ellinger
how that old comrade would laugh at Jack's present
fantasy if he could know of it! He poured out a
drink. The very character of the action, ordinary
and commonplace, put his feet again on solid ground.
He looked at the whiskey to swallow it meant fear
it meant even more. As Brookfield considered his
condition and the impulse to drink he felt that any
voluntary benumbing of the sensitiveness he had de
veloped would be retreat would be a kind of dis
loyalty. He put the untasted liquor batik upon the
sideboard and returned to the library, repeating pos
itively but somewhat mechanically the word "dis
loyalty." The uncanny illusion of the old Justice's
presence was gone. Brookfield was alone in his room
with its fondly familiar furniture and fittings, and
in his mind nothing but the reiterant word "dis
loyalty."
"Disloyalty? . . . Whose?"
"Your own!"
" Disloyalty to what?"
"To your ideal!"
The tendency of things to swim went by; Brook-
field was himself again the centre of a calm.
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"That was an attack of nerves," he said to himself,
"worthy of an inmate of the Old Ladies' Home!
What time is it, I wonder?" His watch showed twen
ty-nine minutes after midnight. " I'll see Monroe in
the morning and get him to give me a sedative."
But he knew in his heart that he lied.
Two days after the night on which Brookfield had
experienced what he called "an attack of nerves"
he received a letter which read as follows:
" MY DEAR MR. BROOKFIELD, I am sending you a second
book upon telepathy and kindred subjects. This is the book
which, on the occasion of my visit to your home, I promised
to send to you. It has a very instructive consideration of
the phenomena of hypnotism and some speculation upon
the ethical question unavoidably associated with the use of
that force. The first book that I sent you upon the subject
of ^psychic phenomena I regarded as an essential preparation
for the one I am sending to-night. I had not meant, how
ever, to impose between the two books a probationary inter
val of such uncomplimentary length, but the rude fact is
that I forgot the second one until to-day. My contrition
will at once appear when I tell you that the hour is one-quar
ter past midnight, and that I pen this letter before permit
ting myself to retire. With sincere wishes for your personal
usefulness and peace, believe me,
"Your obedient servant,
"JEFFERSON M. PRENTICE."
Brookfield looked at the date and wondered. The
letter had been written in Washington on the self
same night that he, sitting in his library here in Louis
ville, had been so strongly impressed by a sense of the
writer's presence, and assuming that the writer had
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quoted standard time, to which Brookfield's watch
was set the hours had been identical !
What wizard's power was this' Brookfield en
deavored to recall the only conversation he and
Justice Prentice had held. He remembered his ques
tion, "Do you mean that you know what I think?"
and the Justice's reply: "I don't claim any monopoly
of that power. It's my opinion that every one reads
the thoughts of others that is, some of the thoughts."
Had he, two nights before, been reading the Justice's
thought? Or was it only coincidence that while his
own mind had recalled a vivid recollection of the Jus
tice, that gentleman had independently chosen to in
dite him a letter ? Helen had said that in his college
days he had been able to make her get up from her
bed and write to him. . . .
Did he possess such a power unconsciously?
Prentice had said to him, "You have a strong
psychic, a strong hypnotic ability." It was conse
quent to that statement that the Justice had sent him
the second book of " instruction and caution."
Brookfield read the book in the concentrated in
tensity of a blow-flame read and reread it. Its
author differed with all those of his contemporaries
who held that there was nothing in hypnotism but
suggestion, and quoted in his support the agreement
of those authors themselves that between the hypno
tist and his subject there existed for an indefinite time
after the hypnosis a strong rapport. What was this
unison of vibration between the two but an invasion
of the subconscious field of the subject and a perma
nent seizure of part of that territory? Was there
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anything but an assumption, was there sufficient
evidence to show that this rapport which seemed to
persist through life ceased with the death of either?
It was under the discussion of this inquiry that the
author introduced the ethical considerations to w r hich
Justice Prentice had called his attention. This pres
entation made an indelible impression upon Brookfield,
not so much because of the dire consequences which
it outlined as by the author's explanation of a vi
bratory agreement between two minds the dynamic
agitation of the communicating ether by one mind
and its registration by the other mind. The figure
fitted in and confirmed all that Brookfield had already
worked out for himself.
Brookfield's family physician, Dr. Monroe, was a
fad homceopathist that is to say, Monroe was a
"high -potency" man. The high -potency man ob
tains the ordinary homoeopathic dose, already in-
finitesmal, and dilutes it maybe ten thousand times.
There is no instrument in the universe except the
human subconscious mind delicate enough to detect
the presence of a drug in a high-potency pellet no
reagent known to chemistry will answer to its action.
A high-potency homoeopathist is a skilled diagnosti
cian practising suggestive therapeutics in a blindfold.
Now and then one of them lays aside the blindfold
and joyously, but secretly, with blank powder, adopts
in functional disorders the art of mental medicine.
Monroe had not laid aside the blindfold, but he was
peeping.
A wise physician who would not dare to confess to
his pastor that he indulged in beneficent deceit at
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three dollars a deception could find encouraging
sympathy in the heart of the intelligent owner of
a roulette - wheel. Monroe had so confided, and at
length, to Brookfield; and in Brookfield's present
psychological study of Clay's case Dr. Monroe had
been his guide.
Together Brookfield and the doctor dissected the
new book. The doctor had certain patients in whom
he was sure he had occasionally induced a slight
hypnosis. The features of their cases were discussed,
the method of their cures. The doctor agreed with
the reported opinion of the Justice that Brookfield
was possessed of considerable magnetic power.
One night the two men had sat fairly late in Brook-
field's library browsing rather than surveying the
fascinating field they had partially explored in com
pany when the young darky, Jo, intruded to solicit
the doctor's ministrations. Jo was "low in his mind" j
it transpired also "his food didn't seem to strengthen
him none." Yet pulse, respiration, and temperature
were normal; Jo's tongue was as clean as a sliced
tomato. More careful inquiry developed the fact
that a recent addition to Jo's circle of acquaintance
was a young colored man from Louisiana, a person of
aggressive amativeness and notably of winsome qual
ities with the opposite sex. Even Jo's own girl was
taking fluttering notice of the new arrival. Some
said that the young man was a doctor's son himself
and could cast a spell. He and Jo had come to words
over the girl. Jo couldn't recall the exact threat in
dulged in, but it had been to the effect that Jo had
' ' better look out. ' ' Jo dated the most alarming of his
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symptoms from that evening. The doctor and Brook-
field looked at each other seriously.
"If this is a spell, Mr. Brookfield," said the doctor,
"and I see no other explanation of it, I think it is a
case where your faculties are more clearly needed
than mine. You are a man constantly favored by
fortune, the powers are with you, and I think you
could do something for Jo."
"What do you think, Jo?" Brookfield asked the
boy.
"Well, Marse Jack, if I am hoodooed, I'd bet your
luck agin any nigger if you'd holp me."
Jack patted the boy comfortingly on his resilient
kinks, patted him with that strong hand which subtly
emitted reassurance to dog or horse or man. In ac
cordance with his reading and his previous casual in
struction from the doctor, Jack seated the boy in an
easy-chair, his head at rest, his hands lying comfort
ably in his lap. Jo's attention was directed in turn
to each part of his body, and complete relaxation
induced. Brookfield then stroked him gently over
the eyes, and brought his own hands down over
shoulders, arms, and limbs, though not in actual con
tact. An easy smile flitted at the corners of Jo's
ample mouth; a gentle pricking came into feet and
fingers. He heard Brookfield, far away, say in a tone
like the bass note on the chapel melodeon, "You
may close your eyes, Jo."
The eyelids of the negro boy closed down with
leaden slowness his breathing deepened he seemed
to sleep.
Brookfield looked at the doctor the doctor lifted
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his hand, prompting Brookfield in the experiment.
Brookfield placed his own hand some inches over Jo's
and moved it slowly to one side. The boy's hand
followed. Brookfield replaced it by the same method.
When Brookfield's head was inclined to either side
Jo's head moved with it.
Monroe took the boy's wrist in his grasp, noting
beneath his skilled index-finger that the pulse was
accentuated the doctor indicated the fact. Brook-
field was aware that his own heart was beating faster
than usual. He had a moment's scientific curiosity
as to whether its quickened action was due to the
novelty of his occupation or was in reflex from his
subject.
The room was purring like a sea-shell.
Before him was the still form of the negro; at his
side the smiling, quizzical, intellectual face of the
physician; about them the Sphinx with its unsolved
riddle, the voiceless masks of the great dead, the bust
of Pallas and the raven; and behind them all, back of
the sleeper and the questioner and beneath the sym
bols, the unifying, buoyant, pervading field of force
on which Brookfield felt he was about to tread.
He moved a chair near to the boy and sat down.
Close to Brookfield's mental elbow and slightly behind
him, as he sensed it, an admonitory something repeated
to him the scruples of the author to whom Prentice
had introduced him scruples about invading the
personal domain of another soul; but Brookfield felt
that a darky boy's subconscious territory could not
but be improved by the squatter immigration of a
white man's volition, and especially when the fili-
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busterer came to eject a Voodoo usurper. In a low
monotone Brookfield began to speak to the boy:
" The spell that that Louisiana darky threw over
you, Jo, will be gone when you wake up; so will
that tired feeling. You will enjoy your food after
this, and you will be more cheerful ; you won't be low
in your mind any more, and there won't any nigger
cast any spell on you again. You are sleeping now
you are getting a lot more rest than you would
out of any other sleep. The tired feeling is going
away from you even now, and when I tell you to
wake up you will feel almost as though you'd had a
full night's rest."
Just then the electric buzzer connected with the
front-door button sounded in the back hall. Jo had
previously left the door of the back hall open when
he entered, in order that the sound of the annunciator
might be heard.
"Now, who can that be at this hour?" Brookfield
said, as much to himself as to the doctor. The
answer to his question came from the sleeping
darky.
"That's Mr. Ellinger, suh."
"Mr. Ellinger?"
" Yes, suh; he's at the front door; he's got a paper
bundle under his arm with two ducks in it."
Brookfield looked at the doctor.
"Can that be so?"
"It will be interesting if it is wake him, and find
out."
Brookfield spoke to the boy, snapping his fingers
sharply before his eyes as he did so.
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" That will do, Jo wake up." Jo awoke. " There's
somebody at the front door," said Brookfield.
"Is there?" said the boy.
"The bell just sounded."
"I didn't hear it, suh," said Jo, apologetically;
"excuse me." Jo left to answer the summons.
"If that's Ellinger at the door," said Brookfield to
the doctor when they were alone, "how do you ex
plain that boy's knowledge of it?"
"Clairvoyance," the doctor answered, laconically.
"You know what Hudson would call it?"
The doctor nodded. " Telepathic h trois."
The boy returned, followed by Ellinger, who had
under his arm a home-made bundle. His face wore
a beam of genial good-humor.
" 'Evening, gentlemen," Lew greeted. "You will
excuse the lateness of my call, Jack, but I saw a light
in the window, and "
Jack finished the sentence for him.
"And you didn't want to carry both those ducks
home."
Lew held the bundle before him, turning it over
and over with critical examination. At length, in be
wilderment, he said:
" How the devil did you know that bundle was
ducks?"
Little Jo, who stood by, regarded the scene with
eyes bulging in amazement.
The reviewing courts denied the application of
Whipple's attorney for a new trial.
But one hope remained.
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That hope lay in a constitutional point upon which
appeal was made to the Supreme Court of the United
States. The point was most wire-drawn and attenu
ated. The attorneys themselves submitted it more
in a determination to interpose every obstacle to an
execution of the sentence upon their client than in
a belief in the soundness of the contention. The
basis of their appeal lay in the fact that the Court
had given an order limiting the number of spectators.
This order was given because the janitor had dis
covered a crack in the concrete ceiling of the cellar
below the court-room. The order was enforced only
during two days, and until the architect, who hap
pened to be absent from the city, could return and
make an examination. The crack had probably been
there from the date of building, and bore no relation
to the increased weight above it. The ceiling in ques
tion was of steel girders, and capable of serving as the
floor of a round-house. To limit the number of spec
tators, however, the sheriff had issued tickets of
admission. The defence submitted that in an unre
stricted attendance some casual and voluntary wit
ness might have entered with an experience which
paralleled that of their client, and that the recital
of such similar history might have weighed with the
jury. The contention that the constitutional guar
antee of a public trial had back of it a belief in the
probability or possibility of such fortuitous testimony
was pathetically hopeless, but it was a straw, and
they were drowning.
Brookfield saw in the appeal nothing but delay, yet
to Helen he argued for its promise. He even led her
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to place some hope in his own acquaintance with Jus
tice Prentice, a member of the Court. Helen, like
most women, was too uninformed concerning the
integrity and the incorruptible impartiality of that
august body to see, as Brookfield knew, the futility,
or rather the fatality, of any attempt to influence
one of its members. Yet to buoy her failing hope
he urged the value of this acquaintance he also
showed her the letter recently received from Justice
Prentice.
Helen's memory, stimulated by the sight of this
letter, recalled another letter, and in a firmer hand,
which identified the writer of both as one of whom
she had heard her mother speak.
"This Justice Prentice was he, too, a Kentuck-
ian?"
"Yes."
Helen at once set about finding such letters or
papers as might establish the friendship between the
families, or might point to other like avenues of in
fluence. Her mother's effects were in the possession
of another daughter older than Helen, who lived with
her husband now removed to the Ozark country.
More to set Helen a task that would employ her
mind and give her a change of scene than because
her personal attention to the duty was required, or
that any profit might come of it, Brookfield advised
her to go to her sister's home and to make the search
of her mother's papers herself.
Lew Ellinger went with her.
After Helen's departure the duty of the daily visit
to Clay devolved principally upon Viola, who had as
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company her mother, or as escort her uncle Jack or
Dr. Monroe. These visits to Clay in jail were always
in the presence and. hearing of a guard, and with iron
bars between Viola and Clay. No contact, even of
finger-tips, was permitted between her and him, for
in such slight communication might be conveyed a
drop of poison that would rob a great commonwealth
of its revenge. Notwithstanding these hard restric
tions, Clay was cheered by the visits not more through
Viola's hope for him and her confidence in his ulti
mate acquittal than he was by a strange sense of near
ness to Brookfield and of his protection. On one
occasion Viola inquired if at a certain hour of the
night previous Clay had not called the guard to the
grating in his cell and asked for a blanket. Clay look
ed quickly at the guard then on duty to whom, in
fact, the request had been made. The guard's won
der at the question was as great as Clay's. Viola ex
plained that she had no knowledge of the fact her
self, but asked the question at Uncle Jack's request.
Another and a smiliar question at a later date verify
ing another experiment of Brookfield 's only served
to increase the watchfulness of the officials. It was
evident to them that some underhand work was being
attempted in the jail.
Brookfield's inquiries ceased, but the short naps
which Jo took in his master's library continued in
order that "Marse Jack" might make Jo more and
more immune to every hoodoo in the world.
Helen and Ellinger returned. Both had been suc
cessful. Helen had found the letters for which she
had searched, and Lew had found a game in Spring-
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field from which he had won enough not only to pay
expenses both ways, but to cover his seemingly in
explicable losses to Helen's brother - in - law, whose
guests he and Helen had been, and who had devel
oped an increasing fondness for seven-up during the
visit. Lew admitted to Jack that these losses to the
brother-in-law amounted to very little more than
board and lodging would have footed had he and
Helen invited comment by staying at the hoteL
Jack's austerity during the circumspect phase of this
confidence only aggravated a slight bronchial irrita
tion of Ellinger's and increased Lew's anxiety con
cerning the adjustment of his boutonnibre.
IN Washington, one evening in November, Justice
Prentice sat at a game of chess with Justice Hen
derson, an associate of his Court. About them were
books, for the most part heavy and uninviting, be
hind antiquated casements of diamond-shaped panes,
for they were seated in the library of Justice Pren
tice's house. The room itself was as easy as an old
slipper warm with lamp and firelight, sweetly aro
matic with the trimmings of a side-table on which a
kettle simmered above a spirit flame. Near the aged
players two tumblers stood amid the killed and capt
ured chessmen, beside the checkered field on which
knight and bishop still interposed between contending
royalties. From each tumbler a gentle incense lifted
languidly above a curl of lemon in the vapor-bath.
The two men, though near the same age, were alike
in little else except judicial moderation of speech
Justice Prentice, poetical, sensitive, artistic, almost
femininely intuitive, refined in features and expres
sion, delicate of frame, and elegant in manner ; Justice
Henderson, practical, positive, matter-of-fact, scep
tical, quizzical in glance, secretive, quaintly humor
ous, sturdy, and ordinary in figure and carriage.
From time to time as one pondered over a play the
other moved about the room, or, lighting a pipe, stood
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by and studied the board. There was this difference
in their methods : in Justice Henderson's attack of a
problem his look was fixed on the pieces and with a
roving activity; Justice Prentice frequently looked
through the smoke to the ceiling or closed his eyes
entirely. After one of these silences Henderson made
a move and announced:
"Checkmate in three moves!"
" I don't see that," said Prentice, his gaze returning
to the board.
Henderson began to explain and to demonstrate,
his finger above the pieces. "Well, knight to "
"Yes, yes I see," interrupted Prentice; "check
mate in three moves that's one game each. Shall
we play another?"
"Let's look at the enemy." Henderson drew his
watch. " By Jove! Quarter of twelve! I guess Mrs.
Henderson will be expecting me soon." And then,
as he returned his timepiece to his pocket, he looked
up with a new interest: "I'll play a rubber with you,
Mr. Justice, and its result shall decide your position
on the Whipple case."
"Why, I'm surprised at you! A United States
Supreme Court decision shaped by a game of chess!
We'll be down to the level of intelligent jurymen soon,
nipping pennies for a verdict."
"And a very good method in just such cases as
this," Justice Henderson protested. "Well, if you
won't play, I'll have to go." He got up from his
place at the table.
His host also rose, taking up as he did so his empty
glass and moving toward the sideboard.
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"Not without another toddy?"
"Yes."
"Oh, come now, don't you like this liquor?"
"Immensely! Where did you say you got it?"
Henderson answered, feebly relenting.
"Kentucky. One lump, Judge?"
"Only one."
Prentice dropped the sugar into the glass. " My old
home, sir. And a bit of lemon?"
"A piece of the peel yes."
"They make it there," Prentice explained, as he
reached for the water-kettle.
"I'll pour the water, Mr. Justice," Henderson
volunteered, as he took the glass from Prentice and
tipped the kettle.
"There, there don't drown me," cautioned the
host.
"My folks were Baptists, you see." And with this
time - worn pleasantry Henderson handed Prentice
the glass half full of water, and took his own con
taining the sugar and the lemon-peel. As he reached
for the decanter he inquired:
"What did you say it cost you, Mr. Justice?"
"Fifty cents a gallon."
"What!" Henderson set his glass down upon the
side-table with exaggerated caution, and going to the
fireplace pushed the button of an electric bell. "I
think I'll take water."
"That's what it cost me," Justice Prentice ex
plained, with a humorous twinkle. " Its value I don't
know; an old friend sends it to me fifty cents for
express."
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"Oh!" Henderson relaxed in genuine relief and
picked up his glass again.
"That's different, isn't it?"
"Very."
"He makes it down there," Prentice resumed; and
then, with sudden recollection : " Why, it's in the same
county in which this Whipple murder occurred!"
"How about that point, Mr. Justice?" Henderson
remarked, becoming seriously persuasive. " We might
as well admit it and remand the case."
"Oh no, there's no constitutional point involved."
"A man's entitled to an open trial."
"Well, Whipple had it."
"No, he didn't," contended Henderson; "they
wouldn't admit the public."
"Oh, come, now the court -room was crowded,
and the judge refused admission to others only when
there was danger of the floor breaking."
"But, my dear Mr. Justice," persisted Henderson,
" that would have been all right to limit the attend
ance "
"Well, that's all he did."
" Only he did it by having the sheriff issue tickets
of admission. That placed the attendance entirely
in the control of the prosecution, and the defence is
right in asking a rehearing."
"Nonsense! Justice is a little too slow in my old
State, and I am impatient with technical delays. It
is now years since they openly assassinated the gov
ernor-elect, and the guilty men still at large."
"Why should the killing of Scovil bear on this
case?" asked Henderson.
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"It bears on me I'm concerned for the fair name
of Kentucky."
"Well, if you won't, you won't, and there's an end
of it." Henderson drained his glass of toddy.
"Have another?" Prentice invited, in perfunctory
hospitality.
"Not another drop."
Prentice's servant came into the room, answering
the ring of Justice Henderson, who now asked for his
coat. The servant left to get it. Justice Prentice,
realizing that his offer of another toddy might have
been in better nature, repeated it more cordially.
"No, I mustn't," his guest replied. "Mrs. Hender
son has filed her protest against my coming home
loaded."
"Well, if you won't, you won't." And the host set
his own tumbler on the side-table.
"Hello!" said Henderson, picking up a book bound
in limp morocco, "reading the Scriptures in your old
age?"
"It does look like a Bible, doesn't it?" Prentice
joined him. "That's a flexible binding I had put on
a copy of Bret Harte I admire him very much."
"I like some of his stuff."
"When I get home from the Capitol and you prosy
lawyers, I'm too tired to read Browning and those
heavy guns, so I take Bret Harte very clever, I
think. I was reading ' A Newport Legend ' before
you came. Do you know it?"
"I don't think I do."
With a gesture of apology Prentice took the book
from his friend, explaining as he turned the leaves :
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"It's about an old house at Newport that's haunted.
A young girl in the colonial days died of a broken
heart in the house, it seems her sweetheart sailed
away and left her and here's the way Bret Harte
tells of her coming back."
Justice Prentice's colleagues on the bench were
aware of his fondness for reading aloud. There were
times when their enjoyment of it was less than his
own. Henderson sat down in submissive resignation.
"Oh, I'm not going to read all of it to you," Pren
tice growled, in playful protest "only one verse."
Henderson affected to conceal a smile of gratifica
tion.
"I forgot to tell you" Prentice again interrupted
himself "that when this chap left the girl he gave
her a little bouquet understand?" Henderson nod
ded. "That's a piece of material evidence necessary
to this summing up," and in a legal manner Justice
Prentice patted the page he was about to read. Then,
in a voice trained by practice, modulated by tem
perament, and made rich by a life of self-control, the
jurist read w T ith exquisite tenderness :
" 'And ever since then, when the clock strikes two,
She walks unbidden from room to room.
And the air is filled that she passes through
With a subtle, sad perfume.
The delicate odor of mignonette.
The ghost of a dead and gone bouquet,
Is all that tells of her story yet
Could she think of a sweeter way?'"
In a manner of entire and light relief, he turned to
Henderson.
'COULD SHE THINK OF A SWEETER WAY?' ISN'T THAT CHARMING. EH
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"Isn't that charming, eh?"
"A very pretty idea," Henderson answered, with
judicial composure.
"Beautiful to have a perfume suggest her," Pren
tice urged, with stimulating enthusiasm. And then,
after a moment's retrospection: "I suppose it ap
peals to me especially because I used to know a girl
who was foolishly fond of mignonette." The Justice
closed the book tenderly.
"Well, you don't believe that stuff, do you?" Hen
derson questioned.
"What stuff?"
"That Bret Harte stuff the dead coming back
ghosts, and so forth."
"Yes, in one way I do. I find as I get older that
the things of memory become more real every day
every day. Why, there are companions of my boy
hood that I haven't thought of for years who seem
to come about me more tangibly, or as much so, as
they were in life."
This poetic side of his nature was one that Pren
tice did not often show to his material-minded friend,
consequently the superior smile that came to Hender
son's lips was not surprising as he said :
"Well, how do you account for that? Spiritual
ism?"
"Oh no; it's time's perspective."
"Time's perspective?" Henderson repeated, in a
tone that he would have used to a confused counsellor
at the bar.
"Yes." Prentice, turning to him, realized the dif
ficulty of conveying his idea in words alone. "I'll
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have to illustrate my meaning." He walked toward
the side-table, above which hung one of the few pict
ures in the room. "Here's a sunset by Rousseau.
I bought it in Paris last summer. Do you see what
an immense stretch of land there is in it?"
"Yes."
"A bird's-eye view of that would require a chart
reaching to the ceiling. But see Rousseau's per
spective. The horizon line isn't two inches from the
base."
"Well?"
"Well, my dear Mr. Justice, that is the magic in
the perspective of time. My boyhood's horizon is
very near to my old eyes now. The dimmer they
grow the nearer it comes, until I think sometimes
that when we are through with it all we go out al
most as we entered little children."
Henderson was moved in spite of himself, but more
by the tone of the speaker than by the nature of his
subject. It was against his ideas of self-discipline to
encourage feeling of this kind, so, at a loss for a fitting
reply, he walked toward the picture, affecting an in
terest in its artistic merit.
"A very beautiful painting, Mr. Justice a Russell,
you say?"
"A Rousseau."
"Oh!"
"Yes," said Prentice, throwing off his reflective
mood, "it cost me three thousand only; and a funny
thing about it : the canvas just fitted into the top of
my steamer trunk. It came through the custom-house
without a cent of duty. I completely forgot it."
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"Your memory isn't so retentive, then, as it
seems."
"Not on those commercial matters." Prentice
joined heartily in the laugh against himself.
The servant crossed the room with Justice Hender
son's coat on his arm. In doing so it brushed from
the table where the men had been playing a small
object which fell to the floor with a metallic sound.
"You dropped your tobacco-box, I think," Pren
tice said, as the servant was assisting Henderson with
his overcoat.
"No, I think not." Henderson patted his coat-
pocket to make sure.
"It was this picture, sir," the servant explained,
lifting the fallen object from the floor.
"My gracious, my gracious, it might have been
broken!" exclaimed Prentice. He took the picture
tenderly from the man.
"Oh, it often falls when I'm dusting, sir," remarked
the servant.
"Oh, does it?" ejaculated Prentice, in unfeigned
surprise, as the servant left the room. "Well, I'll
put it away. . . . An ivory miniature by Wimar." With
the caress of a connoisseur he handed the picture to
Henderson. "I prize it highly. Old-fashioned por
trait see gold back."
"A beautiful face."
"Isn't it isn't it?"
"Very. What a peculiar way of combing the hair
long ; and over the ears." Henderson pantomimed
the process with a gesture comically unfeminine.
"The only becoming way women ever wore their
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hair. I think the scrambly style they have now is
disgraceful."
"Your mother, Mr. Justice?"
"Oh, dear, no; a young girl I used to know. Oh,
don't smile she's been dead a good five-and-twenty
years married and had a large family."
"Very sweet very sweet indeed."
" Isn't it ? And see the bodice, too how pretty!
the mammillar bands, you see. They used to make
the waists with just a piece or two of whalebone."
"How do you know, you grizzly old bach?" said
Henderson, nudging Prentice playfully in the ribs.
"In Heaven's name, why shouldn't I?" Prentice
laughed, holding Henderson by the elbow with one
hand and placing the other affectionately upon his
shoulder as he looked over at the ivory miniature.
" Get out get out ! But look at it ! Such suppleness
and rotundity, and all that!" The two old friends
regarded the picture a moment in silence, and then,
as if resenting the changed conditions of his life,
Prentice walked away from Henderson, who still re
tained the miniature.
" A year or so ago I was in Kentucky, and on my
way back I stopped in Indiana for a call on Harland.
He was in chambers hearing a copyright case. It
seemed that a corset-maker "
"A what?" interrupted Henderson, in pretended
expostulation.
"A corset-maker," Prentice courageously repeated,
"was suing some one for infringing his right to an
advertisement a picture of the Venus de Medici or
Lucrezia Borgia, or some of those dear old girls, in one
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of this chap's corsets. You must have seen it in the
window. Well, he had his lithograph and one of his
corsets in court. Do you believe me, it was made of
steel and brass and buckram and all kinds of hard
ware?"
"Oh yes," Henderson answered, smiling; "we have
them at home."
"Harland whispered to me, 'What do you think
of it, Mr. Justice?' and I said, 'I thank God I'm a
bachelor."
Their laughter was again interrupted by Prentice's
servant, who entered with a card. Prentice read the
name and said he would see the visitor.
"A call?" queried Henderson, when the servant
had left the room.
" Yes. The man owns a picture that I've been try
ing to buy a Corot."
"Oh, another of these 'perspective' fellows, eh?"
"Yes; his call doesn't surprise me, because he's
been in my mind all day."
" Seems to be in a hurry for the money, coming at
midnight."
" I set him the example. Besides, midnight is just
the shank of the evening for Mr. Brookfield he's
supposed to be a sporting man."
Prentice coughed warningly as the servant opened
the door and ushered in Jack Brookfield. It struck
the Justice as he greeted his visitor that he was a
trifle pale. He extended his hand cordially.
"Good-evening, Mr. Brookfield."
"You remember me, Mr. Justice?" said Brookfield,
as he met the greeting.
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"Perfectly. This is Justice Henderson."
"I hope I'm not intruding " Brookfield began;
but Henderson took him up.
" I'm just going, Mr. Brookfield." The Justice but
toned his overcoat and crossed to the door. Prentice
followed him.
"No constitutional point about it?" Henderson
made a last appeal for the Whipple case.
"None," Prentice answered, firmly.
"Good-night."
"Good-night."
As the door closed after Henderson, Prentice turned
to Brookfield, who had been regarding the Rousseau.
" Have a chair, Mr. Brookfield."
"Thank you," Brookfield answered, deferentially.
Prentice indicated the side-table.
" I've some medicine here that comes directly from
your city."
"I don't think I will, if you'll excuse me."
"Well, have you brought the picture?"
"The picture is still in Louisville I'm in Wash
ington with my niece "
"Yes."
"And a friend of hers a lady. They are very
anxious to meet you, Mr. Justice."
"Ah!" Prentice paused. "Well, I go to the Cap
itol at noon to-morrow."
"To-night," Brookfield interrupted; "they're leav
ing the city tc-morrow, as you were when I had the
pleasure of receiving you."
"I remember."
Brookfield drew out his watch.
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"They were to come after me in five minutes if I
didn't return, and those five minutes, Mr. Justice, I
hoped you would give to me."
"With pleasure."
The Justice sat down amiably, but Brookfield re
mained standing, thoughtfully silent, as though con
sidering his mission. At length, with compensating
positiveness, he began:
"Those two books that you sent me "
"Yes."
" I want to thank you for them again and ask you
how far you go with the men who wrote them, es
pecially the second one. Do you believe that book ?"
" Yes, I do. I know the man who wrote it, and I
believe him."
" Did he ever do any of the stunts for you that he
writes about?"
"He didn't call them 'stunts,' but he has given me
many demonstrations of his power and mine."
"For example?"
"For example?" Prentice paused a moment, medi
tating. " Well, he asked me to think of him steadily
at some unexpected time, and to think of some defi
nite thing. A few days later in this room two
o'clock in the morning I concentrated my thoughts
I mentally pictured him going to his telephone and
calling me."
"And did he do it?" Brookfield asked, eagerly.
"No." As Prentice paused a shade of disappoint
ment crossed Brookfield's face. "But he came here
at my breakfast-hour and told me that at two o'clock
he had waked and risen from his bed and walked to
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his 'phone in the hallway with an impulse to call
and then had stopped because he had no message to
deliver and because he thought his imagination might
be tricking him."
"You hadn't given him any tip, such as asking
him how he'd slept?"
"None. Five nights after that I repeated the
experiment."
"Well?"
"That time he called me."
"What did he say?"
" He said, ' Old man, you ought to be in bed asleep
and not disturbing honest citizens,' which was quite
true."
Both men smiled at the Justice's admission. There
was a moment's silence, and then Brookfield said, in
a voice that wavered between awe and amusement:
"By Jove! That's kind of harking back to the
Salem witchcraft business, isn't it?"
"Distinctly," Prentice assented, "and in a measure
explaining the ' witchcraft business.' Those old wom
en of Salem were the unconscious pioneers in a new
mental field. A poor, lone creature, hungry for com
panionship, let her thoughts dwell on some young girl
of the neighborhood ; the girl's thoughts answered by
this inevitable law "
"Really inevitable?"
"Really inevitable. The girl could neglect the old
woman and her neighborly claim for sympathy, but
when she couldn't banish the woman from her
thoughts they called it witchcraft, and hanged the
woman."
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"It's a devilish creepy business, isn't it?" Brook-
field said, after a moment's thought.
"Yes."
"And if it's so " he continued, more to himself than
to the Justice.
"And it is so," Prentice pursued.
"Pays a man to be careful what he thinks."
"It will very well pay your type of a man to do so."
"I don't want to be possessed by any of these bug
house theories, but I'm blamed if a few things haven't
happened to me, Mr. Justice, since you started me
on this subject."
"Along this line?"
"Yes," Brookfield answered; and then, with an
air of confession, he added: "And I've tried the other
side of it, too."
"What other side?"
"The mesmeric business." Brookfield involunta
rily suggested the motion of the hypnotist as he saidi
"I can do it."
Again Brookfield felt the steadiness of the old man's
gaze. He met it just as steadily as he found himself
wondering which of his thoughts his silent inquisitor
was reading. After a moment of this telepathic in
terrogation, as Brookfield construed it, the Justice
leaned forward on the table.
"Then I should say, Mr. Brookfield, that for you
the obligation of clean and unselfish thinking was
doubly imperative."
"Within this last year I've put persons well, prac
tically asleep in a chair, and I've made them tell me
what a boy was doing a mile away, in a jail."
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"I see no reason to call clairvoyance a bug-house
theory," Prentice answered, easily.
"I only know that I do it."
"Yes, you have the youth for it the glorious
strength." There was a pathetic note of regret in
the old man's voice. "Does it make any demand on
your vitality?"
"I've fancied that a headache to which I'm sub
ject is more frequent that's all." Brookfield passed
his hand over his eyes a gesture that had become
characteristic.
"But you find the ability the power increases,
don't you?"
"Yes. Within the last month I've put a man into
an hypnotic sleep with half a dozen waves of the
hand."
As Brookfield lifted his hand from the back of the
chair and voluntarily repeated the mesmeric pass,
Prentice asked:
"Why any motion?"
"Fixes his attention, I suppose."
"Fixes your attention." The old Justice smiled.
"When in your own mind your belief is sufficiently
trained, you won't need this " And Prentice imi
tated Brookfield's gesture.
"I won't?" somewhat incredulously.
"No."
"What '11 I do?"
"Simply think."
Brookfield smiled slightly.
"You have a headache, for example?"
"I have a headache, for a fact."
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"Well, some persons could cure it by rubbing your
forehead."
"I know that," Brookfield admitted, remembering
how Viola had done so.
' ' Others could cure it by the passes of the hypnotist ;
others by simply willing that it should be cured."
"Well, that's where I can't follow you and your
friend, the author."
"You simply think your head aches," Prentice said,
tolerantly.
"I know it aches."
"I think it doesn't."
"What?" Brookfield looked at his host, who was
leaning quietly back in his easy-chair, his eyes closed.
"I think it doesn't," the old man repeated, gently.
The pain in Brookfield's head ceased, as it some
times did, for the space of a heart-beat. He waited
for a second pulse and a third, confident of its return,
when, feeling that further delay would be impolite, he
answered truthfully:
"Well, just at this moment it doesn't. But isn't
that simply mental excitement won't it come back?"
' ' It won't come back to-day." There was no doubt
in the affirmative tone.
"Well, that's some comfort. The blamed things
have made it busy for me since I've been studying
this business."
"It is a two-edged sword." Prentice opened his
eyes and looked compassionately at his visitor.
"You mean it's bad for a man who tries it?"
"I mean that it constantly opens to the investigator
new mental heights, higher planes; and every man,
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Mr. Brookfield, is ill in some manner who lives habitu
ally on a lower level than that of the light he sees."
The servant announced that two ladies were in the
reception-room below.
"Your friends?" Prentice asked Brookfield.
"I think so."
"Yes, sir," the servant volunteered.
"Ask them to come up." The Justice rose and
took a tumbler from the table. "I'll put away Jus
tice Henderson's glass," he said, in explanation of
his act.
"They're Kentucky ladies, Mr. Justice."
"But I don't want any credit for a hospitality I
haven't earned."
XI
A3 the two ladies came into the room, Viola was
slightly in advance of Helen. Jack took her hand
and presented her to the Justice. As he turned to
Helen, she said:
"One moment, Jack; I prefer to introduce my
self."
Justice Prentice desired the ladies to be seated.
"You are not a married man, Justice Prentice?"
Helen began, interrogatively.
There was a tone of tender regret in the voice of
the old Justice as he answered, quietly
"I am not."
"But you have the reputation of being a very
charitable one."
"That's pleasant to hear."
Prentice resumed his chair opposite to that in
which Helen had seated herself. Brookfield stood
by the table, slightly out of the Justice's range of
vision, reassuringly holding Viola's hand. He knew
by her trembling that the girl was in an agony of
apprehension.
"What charity do you represent?" Prentice asked,
by way of an opening.
"None. I hardly know how to tell you my ob
ject."
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"It's a personal matter, is it?" Prentice looked
to Brookfield to help him out.
"Yes, a very personal matter, Mr. Justice."
"I have here," said Helen, "an autograph-book."
Again Prentice looked at Brookfield with a slight,
amused smile. "I usually sign my autograph for
those who wish it at the "
"I did not come for an autograph, Justice Pren
tice," Helen broke in, tremulously; "I have brought
one."
"Well, I don't go in for that kind of thing very
much I have no collection. My taste runs more
toward "
"The autograph I have brought is one of yours
written many years ago. It is signed to a letter."
Helen offered the book. "Will you look at it?"
"With pleasure," Prentice replied, adjusting his
glasses. "Is this the letter?"
Helen nodded.
The Justice read aloud: "'June 15, i860. 1 Dear
me, that's a long time ago. 'My dear Margaret,
The matter passed off satisfactorily a mere scratch
Boland apologized. Jeff.'. . . What is this?"
"A letter from you."
Prentice himself showed agitation both in voice
and face as he repeated the words:
" ' My dear Margaret . . . 1860. ' Why, this letter
was it written to Margaret ?"
"To Margaret Price," Helen affirmed, in a voice
almost inaudible with emotion.
"Is it possible? Well, well!" Prentice looked
dreamily at the miniature lying on the table before
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him. " I wonder if what we call coincidences are ever
mere coincidences. Margaret Price! Her name was
on my lips only a moment ago."
"Really, Mr. Justice?" Brookfield asked, his heart
taking unreasonable hope from the circumstance.
"Yes. Did you know Margaret Price?"
Brookfield turned to Helen as he answered in the
affirmative. Prentice's gaze followed Brookfield's,
and in response to his look more than to his words
Helen said:
" She was my mother."
"Margaret Price was ?"
"Was my mother."
The old Justice leaned back in his chair; over his
face there passed in turn astonishment, perplexity,
tenderness.
"Why, I was just speaking of her to Justice Hen
derson, who went out as you came in you remem
ber?"
He appealed with animation to Brookfield, who
nodded assent. His audience of three hung almost
breathlessly on his words.
"Her picture dropped from the table here this
miniature." He took the ivory portrait in his hand
affectionately. " Margaret Price gave it to me her
self. And you " his tender old eyes lifted to Helen's,
his voice trembled and dropped to a lower key
"and you are her daughter?"
"Yes, Mr. Justice."
" Yes, yes ; I can see the likeness. At twenty you
must have looked very like this miniature." He
handed the portrait to Helen.
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"I have photographs of myself that are very like
this," Helen said, handing the picture to Jack. As
he and Viola studied it together, Helen turned to the
Justice, pursuing the topic that had begun so auspi
ciously.
"And you say you were speaking of her just now?"
"Not five minutes ago."
"What were you saying of her?"
Brookfield put the miniature down on the table
and waited for the answer. The Justice hesitated
strangely, but once launched on his confession he
spoke rapidly.
"Well, I was saying that the old bodices were a
more civilized article of apparel than the modern sub
stitute for them, madam. Don't you agree with me?"
"I don't think it an important question, Mr.
Justice," Helen returned, without coquetry, yet in a
tone that implied appreciation of the pleasantry sug
gested by the comparison.
"I trust you don't think it an impertinent one?"
The courtly old Kentuckian was on his feet imme
diately with a gesture of deference both to Helen
and Viola that would have disarmed any inclination
to criticism.
" Oh no," Helen hastened to assure him.
"But be seated, please," the Justice urged Viola,
who was still standing by her uncle. " I am really
delighted that you calleddelighted." The old man
beamed.
"Even at such an hour?" Helen ventured.
"At any hour." The tender sincerity of his voice
was unmistakable. "Margaret Price was a very dear
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friend of mine. And to think you are her daughter!'*
Prentice took the autograph - book from the table
again, scanning the note which more than filled the
first page of the paper. "And this letter 1860!
What's this?" He had turned a leaf.
"Oh, don't touch that!" Helen exclaimed, half ris
ing as she did so; "it will break. It's only a dry
spray of mignonette pinned to the note when you
sent it."
"A spray of mignonette," Prentice repeated, mus
ingly. He half lifted the volume of Bret Harte from
which he had read to Justice Henderson earlier in the
evening.
"It was my mother's favorite flower and perfume,"
Helen explained.
"I remember." The Justice's expression relaxed
in baffled weariness. He turned to Brookfield. " Well,
well, this is equally astonishing!"
"Do you remember the letter?" Jack asked him.
"Perfectly."
" And the circumstance it alludes to ?" Brookfield's
voice almost shook with eagerness.
" Yes," Prentice, answered simply ; " it was the work
of a romantic boy. ' ' Turning to Helen, he said : " I I
was very fond of your mother, Mrs. " He paused
in an attempt to recall her name; then remembering
that he had not heard it, said, pleasantly, " By-the-
way, you haven't told me your name."
"Never mind that now," Helen begged; "let me be
Margaret Price's daughter for the present."
"Very well," Prentice agreed. He returned to the
subject of the letter, addressing all three of his visi-
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tors. "This was a little scratch of a duel they've
gone out of fashion now, I'm thankful to say."
"Do you remember the cause of this one?" Helen
asked.
"Yes. Henry Boland had worried Margaret some
way. She was frightened, I think, and fainted."
"And you struck him?"
"Yes, and he challenged me."
" I've heard mother tell it. Do you remember what
frightened her?"
" I don't believe I do does the letter say ?" Again
the Justice turned to the book.
"No," said Helen, evidently anxious to distract his
attention from the book. "Try to think."
"Was it a snake or a toad?" the Justice pondered.
"No a jewel."
"A jewel? I remember now a cat's-eye a cat's-
eye jewel, wasn't it?"
"Yes, yes, yes." Helen covered her eyes with her
handkerchief and bowed her head upon the table.
Viola came to her side in a surge of sympathy and
laid her hand gently on Helen's shoulder.
Justice Prentice was at a loss to understand the
cause of her sudden tears. Had he inadvertently
touched some ancient wound?
" My dear madam, it seems to be a very emotional
subject with you," he said, tentatively.
"It is." Helen raised her wet eyes to his face. "I've
hoped so you would remember it. On the cars I was
praying all the way that you would remember it,
and you do you do." Helen leaned over the table
pleading, eager, straining for his answer.
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"I do yes," he assured her.
" Compose yourself, dear," Viola whispered to Helen,
her arms about her; "remember what depends on it."
" It is evidently something in which I can aid you,"
Prentice said, gently.
"It is. And you will?"
"There is nothing I would not do for a daughter of
Margaret Price. You are in mourning, dear lady;
is it for?"
"For my son."
The Justice turned apologetically to Jack, as if he
would spare her.
"How long has he been dead?"
"He is not dead, Justice Prentice!" Helen cried,
her voice rising with emotion. " My boy, the grandson
of Margaret Price, is under sentence of death." She
rose from her chair.
"Sentence of death!" In a moment Justice Pren
tice had recovered the judicial mantle of his office and
was on guard.
"Yes; I am the mother of Clay Whipple "
"But, madam"
" He is to die. I come "
"Stop!" Prentice commanded, sternly. "You forget
yourself." He retreated with great gravity toward
the door of his private apartment. "The case of
Whipple is before the Supreme Court of the United
States. I am a member of that body I cannot
listen to you."
"You must." Helen followed him.
"You are prejudicing his chances," Prentice went
on, imperatively rather than in explanation; "you
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are making it necessary for me to rule against him."
And then in a tone of more human appeal : " My dear
madam, for the sake of your boy, do not do this. It is
unlawful without dignity or precedent." He turned
upon Brookfield, whom he evidently held responsible
for this painful interview. " If the lady were not the
mother of the boy, I should call your conduct base."
"But she is his mother," Viola interjected.
"And, Justice Prentice, I am the daughter of the
woman you loved," Helen said.
"I beg you to be silent." The Justice put his
hand on the door-knob.
"Won't you hear us for a moment?" Jack tempo
rized, feeling that the opportunity they had counted
on so much was slipping from them.
"I cannot I dare not. I must leave you."
"Why?" The question came from Viola.
"I have explained," the Justice hurried on, in his
indignation; "the matter is before the Court for me
to hear you would be corrupt."
"I won't talk of the question before your Court."
Helen's intuition seized the one possible plea for a
hearing. "That, our attorneys tell us, is a constitu
tional point."
"That is its attitude."
" I will not talk of that. I wish to speak of this
letter."
"You can listen to that, can't you, Mr. Justice?"
Jack pleaded.
Prentice paused and surveyed his visitors: Brook-
field, manly, straightforward, sincere ; Viola, trembling
ly expectant and suppliant; Helen, in an anguish of
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suspense, her frightened face so wonderfully like one
he remembered.
"Do you hope for its influence indirectly?" he
asked, coming back into the room.
" No. Sit down, Justice Prentice, and listen to me.
I will talk calmly to you." Helen resumed her place
at the table ; Viola joined her, standing with her arms
about her the two women making a picture that
moved the old Justice more than he would have cared
to confess.
"My dear madam," he said, "my heart bleeds for
you." Then to Brookfield : " Her agony must be past
judicial measurement."
"Only God knows, sir."
There was a moment's silence before Helen again
turned to the Justice.
" You remember this letter, Mr. Justice you have
recalled the duel?"
Prentice bowed.
"You remember, thank God, its cause."
"I do."
"You know that my mother's aversion to that
jewel amounted almost to an insanity?"
"I remember that."
"I inherited that aversion. As a child the sight
of one of them would throw me almost into con
vulsions."
"Is it possible?"
" It is true. The physicians said I would outgrow
the susceptibility, and in a measure I did. But I dis
covered that Clay had inherited the fatal fear from
me."
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"You can understand that, Mr. Justice," Brook-
field declared, anxiously.
"Medical jurisprudence is full of such cases. Why
should we deny them? Is nature faithful only in
physical matters ? You are like this portrait. Your
voice is that of Margaret Price. Nature's behest
should have embraced also some of the less apparent
possessions, I think."
"We urged all that at the trial," Jack submitted,
"but they called it invention."
"Nothing seems more probable to me."
"Thank you," Helen said, in deepest gratitude,
hard put to it to restrain her tears of relief. " Well,
as I was saying, Clay, my boy, had that dreadful and
unreasonable fear of the jewel. I protected him as
far as possible. But one night a year ago some men,
companions, finding that the sight of this stone an
noyed him, pressed it upon his attention. He didn't
know, Mr. Justice, he was not responsible." Helen's
fingers locked and unlocked in her agony. "It was
insanity; but he struck his tormentor, and the blow
resulted in the young man's death." Unconsciously
she rose and extended her hands in dramatic appeal
to the Justice.
"Terrible terrible!" he whispered, painfully atten
tive.
"My poor boy is crushed by the awful deed. He
is not a murderer he was never that but they have
sentenced him, Mr. Justice; he is to die." Helen's
rising tone ended in one heart-broken sob. She stag
gered toward the Justice, who had himself risen from
his chair, drawn by an involuntary impulse to her
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aid, but Brookfield was before him and took her in
his arms.
"Helen, dear Helen" Brookfield sought to com
fort her " remember how much depends on you try
to compose yourself."
"You promised," Viola reminded her.
Helen became conscious of the voice of Justice
Prentice speaking in judicial tones to Jack, and of
Jack's rejoinders.
"All this was ably presented to the trial Court,
you say?"
"By the best attorneys."
"And the verdict?"
"Still was guilty. But, Mr. Justice, the sentiment
of the community has changed very much since then.
We feel that a new trial would result differently."
The mention of a new trial reminded Helen of her
own part she heard her own voice speaking to the
Justice.
"When our lawyers decided to go to the Supreme
Court, I remembered some letter of yours in this old
book. Can you imagine my joy when I found the
letter was on the very point of this inherited trait on
which we rested our defence?"
"We have ridden twenty-four hours to reach you,"
Jack said. "The train came in only at ten o'clock."
"Oh, Mr. Justice, you are not powerless to help
me!" Helen was alive with new hope and joy the
man into whose deep eyes she looked was responding
to her appeal. "What is an official duty to a moth
er's love, to the life of my boy?"
" My dear, dear madam, that is not necessary, be-
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lieve me. This letter comes very properly under the
head of new evidence." In the most matter-of-fact
manner of which he was at the moment capable,
Prentice turned to Brookfield. "The defendant is
entitled to a rehearing on that."
" Mr. Justice Mr. Justice!" Helen exclaimed, almost
beside herself with joy.
"There there." Again Viola's arms were about
her.
"Of course that isn't before us," Prentice ex
plained, ' ' but when we remand the case on this con
stitutional point "
"Then you will you will remand it!" cried Helen.
"Justice Henderson had convinced me on that
point to-night, so I think there is no doubt of the
decision."
"You can never know the light you let into my
heart."
Viola returned to her the handkerchief which had
marked the page in the autograph-book. Helen closed
the book with the handkerchief in its place.
"What is that perfume?" Prentice asked, as she
did so. "Have you one about you?"
"Yes, on this handkerchief."
"What is it?"
"Mignonette."
"Mignonette?"
"A favorite perfume of my mother's. This hand
kerchief of hers was in the book with the letter."
"Indeed!" Prentice inhaled slowly. His eyes were
moist, and in them there was a haunted look of ten
der memory.
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"Oh, Mr. Justice, do you think I can save my
boy?"
Prentice turned to Brookfield.
"On the rehearing I will take pleasure in testify
ing myself as to this hereditary aversion and what I
knew of its existence in Margaret Price."
"May I tell the lawyers so?" Jack asked, eagerly.
"No. They will learn it in the court to-morrow
they can stand the suspense. I am speaking comfort
to the mother's heart."
"Comfort!" echoed Helen; "it is life."
"Say nothing of this call, if you please nothing to
any one."
"We shall respect your instructions, Mr. Justice,"
Brookfield answered for all; and then explained: "My
niece, who has been with Mrs. Whipple during this
trouble, is the fiance'e of her son the boy lying in
jail."
Prentice took Viola's hand in both his own. "You
have my sympathy, too, my dear."
"Thank you."
"And now, good-night."
"Good-night." Viola joined her uncle Jack at the
door; both turned, waiting for Helen.
"Good-night, Justice Prentice," she was saying.
"You must know my gratitude words cannot tell it."
"Would you do me a favor?" he said.
"Can you ask it?"
"If that was the handkerchief of Margaret Price,
I'd like to have it."
Helen lifted the folded square of antique lace from
the book; she put it in the extended hand of Pren-
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tice. Some expression of gratitude formed in her
mind; some allusion to the handkerchief as a me
mento; some thought of the mother who had owned
it, but no words would come. There are seas upon
which we do not venture small boats, there are emo
tions in which language cannot live. Helen turned
to Brookfield and Viola, and went from the room
without looking back.
The Justice, left alone, stood for a moment looking
at the folded handkerchief in his hand. He spoke
aloud.
"Margaret Price. . . . People will say that she has
been in her grave five-and- twenty years " he picked
up the miniature from the table "but I'll swear her
spirit was in this room to-night and directed a de
cision of the Supreme Court of the United States."
From a distant belfry there came the stroke of two.
Prentice lifted the handkerchief to his face
" ' The delicate odor of mignonette,
The ghost of a dead and gone bouquet,
Is all that tells of her presence yet
Could she think of a sweeter way?"-'
XII
HPHE Brookfield party returned to Louisville,
1 Helen, Viola, and the attorneys greatly excited:
Helen to a tearful degree of hope and exaltation;
Viola's spirit like a pinioned bird suddenly set free;
the attorneys stimulated by their victory, and anx
ious to retrieve cause and reputation in a second trial ;
Brookfield sharing all these emotions, but addition
ally stirred to the centre of his being by his experi
ence in Prentice's library and the utterances of the
Justice. One comment in particular frequently re
curred :
"Then I should say, Mr. Brookfield, that for you
the obligation of clean and unselfish thinking was
doubly imperative."
Brookfield was aware of the threatening paralysis
of too much self-examination, aware also that of late
he had been dangerously given to an introspective
habit. Yet he further indulged it in the light of
Prentice's warning, in order to ascertain to his moral
satisfaction the character of his thinking. Was it
clean? Was it sufficiently unselfish?
And that sudden cure of his headache? Reports
and pretended records of all demonstrations of that
kind had found no receptive faith in him. What ex
plained it?
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That he could question a negro boy whose objective
faculties were inhibited by hypnosis and get from
that boy a reading of another person's thoughts he
had demonstrated to himself and to a scientific ad
viser. That' the subjective mind of the negro boy
was in communication directly and indirectly with
other minds, through channels of affinity previously
and variously established, was probable. For similar
phenomena such was the scientific explanation by
the most advanced students of the subject. Brook-
field himself was prepared to believe that an individ
ual subjective mind set free from its objective cus
todian by hypnosis was in flowing communication
with the common subjective mind of humanity. But
to explain or even grant the purposive projection of
a thought puzzled him. It was easy for him, at this
stage of his special education, to admit that Prentice's
author friend had read the thought of the Justice, in
which was held a picture of the author going to his
telephone ; easy to understand that such reading had
suggested the action to an inert sleeper; but that a
thought could be projected and be a compelling order
was more than startling it was intellectually revolu
tionary.
Yet there was the fact of his own headache being
banished at command! What accomplished that, if
it was not a projected force? Yet if a force, what
was the means of its communication ? For Brookfield
could imagine no force transmitted except through
a material vehicle or medium. But assume a medium ;
assume the medium to be the ether that predicated,
interplanetary, intermolecular, all - penetrating sub-
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THE WITCHING HOUR
stance. Assume that medium, or suppose still an
other and finer ether, devoted to the transmission of
thought alone. What stirs its atoms? What agi
tates and propels them in seeming currents or direc
tions ?
Brookfield related the headache incident to Dr.
Monroe. That gentleman said: "A cure by sugges
tion." But this explanation Brookfield refused. He
admitted a degree of susceptibility to suggestion in
every person, but susceptibility permitting an in
stantaneous cure of a headache would be most ab
normal. He also combated the implication of hyp
nosis which Monroe offered in his inquiries as to
whether the Justice had looked at him steadily dur
ing the interview, had established any monotony of
tone, and the like.
Brookfield had not been hypnotized into relief.
That explanation was untenable.
The more he considered it the more convinced he
became that there must exist a mental force that is
dynamic a force that certain minds can consciously
direct. What was the character of a mind capable
of commanding this power? What was its essential
endowment ? What was the needed degree of devel
opment ?
Brookfield had never before knowingly met such
a man as Prentice. Could that uncanny power of his
be cultivated in other men ? Imagine it in the hands
of one vicious or criminally disposed! Brookfield felt
that he, like Hamlet, could accuse himself of such
things that "'twere better his mother had not borne
him" ; yet his own power as a hypnotist had been cul-
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THE WITCHING HOUR
tivated and perceptibly increased, and at the cost of
only a little greater tension, resulting, perhaps, in a
trifling recurrence of his headaches.
Again he recalled a remark by the Justice: "The
investigation constantly opens new mental heights,
and every man is ill in some manner who lives habit
ually on a lower plane than that of the light he sees."
Did the answer to his fear of the power in improper
hands lie in that explanation of Prentice's ? Did the
power come only to men who lived up to their high
est light, and, if once acquired, did it desert them
when they willingly and habitually abandoned their
standard ?
The thought of this possibility influenced Brook-
field. He formed no resolutions as to plainer living,
or higher thinking, but the presence of the idea itself
acted as a constant monitor. One by one indulgences
were foregone ; unwholesome topics were dismissed from
conversation and from mind ; a conscious tonic, physi
cal and mental regimen was gradually established.
One evening after dinner Brookfield was in the
library with the ladies. Viola and her mother were
quietly discussing some intricacy of knitting; Helen
was endeavoring to interest herself in a magazine.
Brookfield sat in a big sofa by the fireplace. A grate
of gleaming anthracite was shaping and reshaping
faces in its bed, as it always did for him. He had an
impulse to call Helen's attention to these pictures, and
he foresaw with unusual distinctness, even for him, the
position he would like her to take beside him on the
sofa leaning forward as he pointed out the faces in
the coals, one elbow on her knee, her chin in the
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THE WITCHING HOUR
supporting hand. At that moment Helen laid the
magazine she had been reading on the table, came
over to his side, and assumed the position he had
mentally seen her take.
"What are you looking at, Jack?"
Her very words stepped Indian fashion into the
mental footprints of his thoughts.
Brookfield answered her, tracing the wavering forms
in the fire, and speaking in an easy and natural under
tone; but his thoughts were busy with the strange
coincidence that had just occurred. That there was
any dynamic force in his own thinking, nothing as yet
demonstrated. The events of the last few moments,
however, were suggestive of experiment.
"Would it astonish you, Helen, if Viola were to put
down her work and come over here ?" Brookfield asked,
in a voice audible to Helen only.
"No. Would it astonish you ?"
" Suppose that, instead of perching on the arm of the
sofa beside you, which would be the girlish and natural
thing to do, she came behind us both ; that she then
put her right hand over your shoulder and her left
hand on my head would that astonish you?"
" If you tell me she is going to do it, the accuracy
of your prevision would astonish me."
"I think she's going to do it."
"I think she isn't," Helen bantered.
"But that isn't the game," Jack explained; "you,
too, must dramatize her doing it." And again he
described the action.
Helen felt an uncanny creeping of the flesh as Viola,
before Jack had ceased speaking, laid aside her needla-
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work and rose to her feet. The girl looked around
uncertainly, crossed the room, and stood behind the
sofa.
"Am I interrupting?" she asked.
"Not at all, my dear," Helen answered.
Viola put her right arm about Helen's neck. There
was a moment's pause ; then she lifted her left hand
and caressingly stroked her uncle's head.
Helen gasped, and was about to exclaim, when
Jack, with finger on his lips, objured her to silence.
The second trial of Clay Whipple began under more
intelligent direction for the defence than the first trial
had displayed, although conducted by the same at
torneys. A sustained endeavor was made to secure
a jury of men of sufficient imagination, if not of suf
ficient information, to conceive the possibility of trans
mitting a mental idiosyncrasy from one generation to
another.
Hardmuth, because of his full knowledge of the
case, had been specially appointed in charge for the
State. His attempts to get an unsympathetic and
matter-of-fact jury were as persistent as the efforts
to the contrary of the defence. The result was the
selection of twelve men not all of whom were satis
factory to either side, and from whom the defence
anticipated at best but a disagreement.
The greater publicity that the elapsed interval had
contributed to the case, together with the closer at
tention that both sides had given to the selection of
the jury, had prolonged that part of the proceedings.
The days so occupied were not altogether unhappy
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THE WITCHING HOUR
ones for the women who loved the defendant. They
were with him now in surroundings less depressing
than those in the jail. They were in the presence and
in the company of men of intelligence, the majority
of whom were sympathizers, and the strongest and
best of whom were advocates of their cause.
Moreover, the mere machinery of the law no longer
terrified the women related to the prisoner. Their
interest, of course, made them unreliable judges of
the value of any bit of testimony; their fears ex
aggerated the menace; their sympathies distorted
favorable utterances ; but they had a consoling realiza
tion that much of the proceedings was in their favor.
The presence of a Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States among the witnesses for the defence
gave dignity to that side, and at once lifted its princi
pal from the condition and color of a malefactor at
bay, endeavoring to escape the just penalty of the
law, to the position of an unfortunate prisoner pre
sumably innocent and whom to prove guilty was the
task of the State.
That portion of the South that lies east of the
Mississippi has a reverence for lineage that is un
known elsewhere in America, with perhaps the ex
ception of Boston. Through the other fields of the
nation the current of life has flowed with a swiftness
and a freedom that have made attention to pedigree
a retarding and unprofitable digression from the gen
eral progress. In Dixie and in Boston, however, the
movement has been rotary rather than progressive.
In the Southland especially it is impossible to be wide
ly introduced without meeting somebody cousin to
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the sponsor. Family connection is a weighty consid
eration. Parents of distinction are computable assets
even when dead. Notable grandparents compound
in value of almost geometrical increase. That the
prisoner's maternal grandmother had been a sweet
heart of a man since advanced to the supreme bench
was a recommendation of considerable import to sev
eral members of the jury. That his singular aver
sion to the cat's-eye had been also hers, and that the
grave and dignified and distinguished legal gentle
man before them had fought a duel shielding that
sensitiveness in a lady from a rude and stupid ap
proach not unlike that from which the prisoner had
defended himself, was of tremendous weight.
Hardmuth brought all his batteries to bear upon this
witness. He put into play every art and trick and
resource that his intelligence and his experience had
developed, and his efforts were not entirely ineffectual
with the jury.
During this second trial, except when testifying or
advising with the attorneys, Brookfield was notice
able for his absence from the court-room. There
were those who attributed this to his possible belief
that the friendship of an ex-gambler would not be
helpful to the accused. Had this been Brookfield's
opinion it would not have been well founded. As
a gambler his reputation had been that of a square
one, and in all contests, whether in sporting, financial,
or political circles, Jack Brookfield was known as a
consistent advocate of fair play. Furthermore, in the
year and a quarter that had passed since the killing
of Denning, Brookfield had taken an increasing inter-
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est in politics. His wide acquaintance, his personal
magnetism, and his ample means had made of him a
factor of influence and consequent power. There was
more than one man on the jury to whom the friend
ship of Brookfield might be valuable.
Brookfield's absence from the court-room was due
to an incident of which he had made no report to any
one. Near the finish of his own testimony he had
chanced to glance along the double row of faces in the
jury-box. The glance had been casual enough in the
beginning, but as it encountered the gaze of one of
the men Brookfield had felt an involuntary arrest of
his attention. A like happening has come to every
one at some time. Eyes confront eyes with inex
plicable recognition the vis-b-vis is a stranger, and
there is on either side no question of that fact, yet
the gaze of both halts in the passing with silent salute
or challenge. Each look says: "Well, what is it you
wish of me?" Though Brookfield held the gaze of
the juror for less than a second, he felt that if pro
longed the interchange would develop into one of
those optical duels that end in self-consciousness and
sometimes irritation and anger. There was a slight
show of color in the temples of the other man before
Brookfield, tactful as he was, could move on with his
glance, accepting for himself the part of retreat. In
a later survey of the men he was careful so to time
and distribute his regard that this particular juror
should not feel any exception in his case. Yet, im
partial as was the disposition of time, there was a
quality in this man's look that made Brookfield aware
that their minds as well as their eyes had met.
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When Brookfield left the court-room, as he did soon
after, he refrained from looking back at the jury. He
was conscious, through some subtle sense, that the
man was again looking at him, and he preferred
that no spectator should note a second exchange of
glances between the juror and himself.
In consequence of this incident Brookfield was
away from the court-room during the period of Pren
tice's examination, although he would have liked
to hear the old Justice testify and to see the effect
of his testimony. Prentice and Brookfield had been
in each other's company the greater part of the time
since the Justice had arrived in Louisville on his pres
ent mission. They had talked much of the case, and
Prentice's opinions, as Brookfield had reported them
to Clay's counsel, had affected to some extent the con
duct of the case.
When, in turn, his examination was finished, Pren
tice came at once to Brookfield. He was not in
clined to minimize the value to the defence of the
appearance of a man of his position, but he reported
a disturbing estimate of the counteracting influence
of Hardmuth. There was, in his opinion, among the
counsel for Whipple no such dominating mind as
Hardmuth's no man so capable of influencing other
men by his mere personality, independently of his
contentions. As one of wide experience in trial pro
cedure and long practice in reading human nature,
Justice Prentice was fearful of the verdict. He feared
Hardmuth's effect upon the jury when he should
come to his argument. Furthermore, there was added
to Hardmuth's personal strength the momentum of
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an increasing position in the public opinion; he was
realizing Brookfield's predictions of success in politics.
He was not only a district attorney by appointment,
but he was the man most generally discussed as his
party's nomination for governor. A murder trial is
a contest in which every factor weighs, and none more
than the importance of attorneys.
The Justice's fears quickly communicated them
selves to Brookfield. If these various considerations
in Hardmuth's personal favor, as well as the facts in
the case itself, were to weigh with the jury, it was
plainly Brookfield's duty to reduce Hardmuth's popu
larity at any cost.
Clay's life was at stake.
"I've tried to fight in the open, Mr. Justice, and to
stoop to nothing for which any of us might be ashamed
hereafter, or I could have crushed that fellow Hard-
muth ere this," Jack said.
"Crushed him?"
"As easily as you'd crush a beetle by treading
on it."
"But if, as you say, the means were unfair "
"Only as telling on a fellow is unfair when you
know something that's against him."
"Something told you in confidence?"
"Not by him. Yes, sir it would have crushed
Hardmuth if I'd printed what I know of him, and as
a citizen I believe I owe it to the public to tell it. I'm
sorry I have put it off until too late."
"Is it too late, Mr. Brookfield? He hasn't begun
his concluding speech. What is the nature of your
charge against him?"
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Brookfield looked at his watch.
" It may be a kindness to you, Mr. Justice, to leave
you entirely out of this. Did you come back in the
automobile ?"
"Yes; it's at the door."
"I'm going to be rude enough to ask you to find
your own way to your hotel."
" No rudeness whatever, Mr. Brookfield. I see that
your time is valuable."
Brookfield ran hurriedly down-stairs, taking from
the rack as he passed it his overcoat and hat. As he
slammed the door of the limousine, he said to the
chauffeur :
' ' The Courier- Journal /' '
XIII
TT was night. Brookfield sat alone in his library
1 deeply enveloped in thought. The only illumina
tion in the room was from the fireplace and a small
lamp on one of the side -tables. The old darky,
Uncle Harvey, entered apologetically.
"Marse Jack?"
" Well, Uncle Harvey ?" Brookfield looked at him.
" 'Scuse me, suh, when you wants to be alone, but
I'se awful anxious myself. Is dey any word from
the co't-house?"
"None, Uncle Harvey."
"'Cause Jo said Missus Campbell had done come
in, an' I thought she'd been to the trial, you know."
" She has." An earnestness came into Brookfield's
manner. "You're not keeping anything from me,
Uncle Harvey?"
"'Deed no, suh. An' I jes' like to ask you, Marse
Jack, if I'd better have de cook fix sompun to eat
maybe de other ladies comin', too?"
"Yes, Uncle Harvey; but whether they'll want to
eat or not will depend on what word comes back from
that jury."
"Yes, suh."
Uncle Harvey left Brookfield moodily pacing the
floor. The report of his sister's return and her fail-
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ure to come to him were disturbing. He had about
determined to go in search of her when Mrs. Campbell
entered the room.
"Jack!" she said, in a tone of mingled astonish
ment and reproof.
"Well?"
"Why are you here?"
" Well " Brookfield hesitated" I live here." Full
seriousness was wellnigh impossible to Jack in most
conversations with his sister.
"But I thought you'd gone to Helen and Viola,"
Mrs. Campbell rebuked him.
"No."
"You should do so. Think of them alone when
that jury returns, as it may at any moment, with
its verdict."
"The lawyers are there, and Lew Ellinger is with
them."
" But Helen Helen needs you."
" I may be useful here."
"How?"
"There's one man on that jury that I think is a
friend."
"One man?"
"Yes."
" Out of a jury of twelve."
"One man can stop the other eleven from bring
ing in an adverse verdict, and this one is with
us."
"Would your going to Helen 'and Viola in the
court-house stop his being with us?" The tone was
a trifle acrimonious.
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"Perhaps not," Jack answered, tranquilly, "but it
would stop my being with him."
"What!" Mrs, Campbell looked about the room in
a possible search for the juror. " I don't understand
you."
"Justice Prentice told me," Jack explained, im
pressively, "that he could sit in his room and make
another man get up and walk to the telephone and
call him by simply thinking steadily of that other
man."
"Superstitious people imagine anything," Mrs.
Campbell commented, scoffingly.
"Imagine much yes; but this isn't imagination."
"It's worse, Jack; I call it spiritualism." It would
be difficult to get more disapproval into a single
speech than Mrs. Campbell's tone and manner crowd
ed into this.
" Call it anything you like," Jack answered, placidly:
" spiritualism or socialism or rheumatism it's there.
I know nothing about it scientifically, but I've tried
it on and it works, my dear Alice it works."
"You've tried it on?"
"Yes."
"With whom?"
"With you." Jack sat Mrs. Campbell gasped.
Some unwarrantable liberty had been taken with her
personal rights. The pause that followed her gasp
was ineffective because her attention was divided be
tween inquiry and inventory. Curiosity triumphed
as she said, interrogatively:
" I don't know it if you have ?"
" That is one phase of its terrible subtlety."
THE WITCHING HOUR
"When did you try it on?"
"That night a month ago when you rapped at my
door at two o'clock in the morning and asked if I was
ill in any way?"
" I was simply nervous about you," Mrs. Campbell
spluttered, defensively.
"Call it 'nervousness' if you wish to, but that was
an experiment of mine a simple experiment."
"Oh!" Indignation and incredulity commingled
in the single note.
"Two Sundays ago," Brookfield continued, "you
went right up to the church door, hesitated, and
turned home again."
" Lots of people do that "
" I don't ask you to take stock in it, but that was
another experiment of mine. The thing appeals to
me. I can't help Helen by being at the court-house,
but, as I'm alive [and my name's Jack Brookfield, I
do believe that my thought reaches that particular
juryman."
" That's lunacy, Jack, dear." Mrs. Campbell began
commiserating her brother.
"Well, call it 'lunacy' I don't insist on rheuma
tism."
" Oh, Jack, the boy's life is in the balance. Bitter,
vindictive lawyers are prosecuting him, and I don't
like my big, strong brother, who used to meet men and
all danger face to face, treating the situation with
silly mind-cure methods hidden alone in his rooms."
Mrs. Campbell, with an embracing gesture, made an
exhibit of Brookfield and his surroundings. " I don't
like it!"
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"You can't acquit a boy of murder by having a
strong brother thrash somebody in the court-room.
If there was anything under the sun I could do with
my physical strength I'd do it, but there isn't. Now,
why not, if I believe I can influence a juryman by my
thought why not try?"
His sister turned from him with a sigh of hopeless
ness as Jo entered from the hallway. Jo's manner
was agitated.
"Well?" Brookfield inquired, sharply.
"Mistah Hardmuth."
"Frank Hardmuth!" Mrs. Campbell exclaimed, in
her astonishment.
"Yes'm," Jo assented.
"Here's one of the 'bitter, vindictive' men you
want me to meet face to face. Now, my dear Alice,
you stay here while I go and do it."
Mrs. Campbell's protest was prevented by the
abrupt entrance of Hardmuth.
"Excuse me," he shouted, "but I can't wait in an
anteroom!"
" That will do, Jo," Brookfield said to the boy.
"I want to see you alone," Hardmuth continued,
threateningly. His nod toward Mrs. Campbell con
veyed his objection to her presence.
"Yes," Brookfield replied to the unspoken ques
tion of his sister. He led her tenderly toward the
door.
" What do you think it is ?" she gasped, in suppressed
anxiety.
" Nothing to worry over," Brookfield answered, re
assuringly, as she left the room.
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Jack Brookfield " Hardmuth began.
"Well?"
" I've just seen Harvey Fisher, of the Courier. , n
"Yes?"
"He says you've hinted at something associating
me with the shooting of Scovil."
"Right!"
"What do you mean?" Hardmuth 's angry explo
sion carried all the threat that was possible.
" I mean, Frank Hardmuth," Jack answered, in that
deliberate calm which most of his masculine acquaint
ances had come to correctly estimate " I mean that
you sha'n't hound this boy to the gallows without
reckoning with me and the things I know of you."
"I'm doing my duty as a prosecuting attorney."
"You are," interrupted Brookfield, "and a great
deal more you're venting a personal hatred."
"That hasn't anything to do with this insinuation
that you've handed to a newspaper man, an insinu
ation for which anybody ought to kill you."
"I don't deal in 'insinuations/ It was a charge."
"A statement?"
"A charge! You understand English a specific
and categorical charge." Brookfield's tone was rising.
"That I knew Scovil was to be shot?"
" That you knew it ? No !" The voice was rasping
with contempt. "That you planned it and arranged
it and procured his assassination."
The courage and character of Brookfield's answer
benumbed Hardmuth for the moment. When he
spoke at last the words came slowly and quietly, and
rang with vibrant passion.
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" If the newspapers print that, I'll kill you, damn
you I'll kill you!" The finish of the threat was in a
whisper. Hardmuth's clinched fist shook in Brook-
field's face.
" I don't doubt your willingness," came the metallic
reply; " and they will print it, if they haven't done so
already."
Tlje insult implied in Hardmuth's belief that to
threaten his life would compel him to retract what he
had said stung Brookfield like a blow on the cheek.
His splendid self-control deserted him for the moment
just long enough to lend increasing power to the
rest of his reply.
"And if they don't print it by God, I'll print it
myself and paste it on the fences!"
Hardmuth's nerve was shaken.
"What have I ever done to you, Jack Brookfield,
except to be your friend ?" he almost whined.
" You've been much too friendly. With this mur
der on your conscience you proposed to take to your
self as wife my niece, dear to me as my life. As re
venge for her refusal and mine, you've persecuted
through two trials the boy she loves and the son of
the woman whose thought regulates the pulse of my
heart an innocent, unfortunate boy. In your am
bition you've reached out to be the governor of this
State, and an honored political party is seriously con
sidering you for that office to-day."
"That Scovil story is a lie, a political lie! I think
you mean to be honest, Jack Brookfield, but some
body's strung you." Hardmuth turned away.
" Wait," Brookfield commanded. " The man that's
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now hiding in Indiana, a fugitive from your feeble
efforts at extradition, sat up-stairs drunk and des
perate, his last dollar on a case card. I pitied him.
If a priest had been there he couldn't have purged his
soul cleaner than poor Raynor gave it to me. If he
put me on, am I strung?"
"Yes, you are," Hardmuth blustered. "I can't
tell you why, because this jury is out and may come
in any moment, and I've got to be there. But I can
square it so help me God, I can square it!"
"You'll have to square it."
Mrs. Campbell came in just then, and behind her
Justice Prentice, a folded newspaper in one hand.
"Excuse me." Prentice apologized for the ab
ruptness of his entrance.
Hardmuth bowed to him respectfully. "Oh, Jus
tice Prentice!"
There was a moment's awkward hesitation before
Brookfield said, with some conciliation:
"The State's attorney Mr. Hardmuth."
"I recognize Mr. Hardmuth," Prentice answered,
with dignity. "I don't salute him because I resent
his disrespectful treatment of myself during his cross-
examination."
"Entirely within my rights as a lawyer, and "
" Entirely," Prentice interrupted ; " and never within
the opportunities of a gentleman."
"Your side foresaw the powerful effect on a local
jury of any testimony by a member of the Supreme
Court, and my wish to break that '
"Was quite apparent, sir, quite apparent," Pren
tice answered. " But the testimony of every man is
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entitled to just such weight and consideration as that
man's character commends. But it is not that dis
respect which I resent. I am an old man; that I
am unmarried, childless, without a son to inherit the
vigor that time has reclaimed, is due to a sentiment
that you endeavored to ridicule, Mr. Hardmuth a
sentiment which would have been sacred in the hands
of any true Kentuckian, which I am glad to hear you
are not."
As Hardmuth began a reply, Brookfield interposed:
"That's all!"
"Perhaps not," the prosecutor said, threateningly,
as he left the room.
"My dear Mr. Brookfield," Prentice hastened to
say as soon as they were freed from Hardmuth's
presence, " that man certainly hasn't seen this news
paper?"
"No, but he knows it's coming."
" When I urged you as a citizen to tell anything you
knew of the man, I hadn't expected a capital charge."
"What is it, Jack?" Mrs. Campbell asked, in alarm.
"What have you said?"
"All in the head-lines," Jack explained, quietly;
"read it." He handed the paper to his sister, and
turned again to the Justice with the question:
"Is that enough for your purpose, Mr. Justice?"
"Why, I never dreamed of an attack of that mag
nitude. Enough!"
Mrs. Campbell exclaimed in an agony of alarm:
"Why why did you do this, Jack?"
" Because I'm your big, strong brother and I had
the information."
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"It was necessary, Mrs. Campbell necessary,"
Prentice added, also assuming Brookfield's calm.
"Why necessary?"
"My poor sister, you don't think. If that jury
brings in a verdict of guilty, what then?"
"What then? I don't know"
"An appeal to the Governor for clemency."
"Well?" Mrs. Campbell prompted.
"This Governor may not grant it," Prentice ex
plained.
"Well?"
"Then we delay things until a new governor comes
in," Jack answered. " But suppose that new gov
ernor is Hardmuth himself?"
"How can the new governor be Hardmuth?"
"Nothing can stop it if he gets the nomination,"
the Justice replied, "and the convention is in session
at Frankfort to-day, with Mr. Hardmuth's name in
the lead."
"I've served that notice on them " Brookfield in
dicated the paper " and they won't dare nominate
him that is, I think they won't."
"But to charge him with murder!" Mrs. Campbell
protested.
"The only thing to consider there," Prentice said
to Brookfield, "is have you your facts?"
"I have."
" Then it was a duty, and you chose the psycholog
ical moment for its performance. ' With what meas
ure you mete, it shall be measured to you again."'
The Justice turned to his agitated hostess. " I have
pity for the man whom that paper crushes, but I
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THE WITCHING HOUR
have greater pity for the boy he is trying to have
hanged. You know, Mrs. Campbell, that young
Whipple is the grandson of an old friend of mine."
"Yes, Mr. Justice, I know that." Mrs. Campbell's
answer unconsciously fell into the tender tone of the
Justice.
Jo's hurried entrance and his cry, "Marse Jack!"
startled the occupants of the room. Mrs. Campbell,
womanlike, feared the return of Hardmuth; Jack
thought some bad news had come from the trial.
The appearance of Helen and Viola, who followed Jo,
did not momentarily dissipate this belief.
"Oh, Jack!" Helen exclaimed. She staggered, and
only Jack's arms prevented her from falling.
"What is it?" he asked.
Viola, who was holding the hand of her mother,
answered: "The jury returned and asked for instruc
tions."
"Well?"
"There's a recess for an hour," Helen found voice
to say. She looked toward Viola, who continued the
explanation.
"The Court wished them locked up for the night,
but the foreman said the jurymen were all anxious
to get to their homes, and that he felt an agreement
could be reached in an hour."
The reassuring voice of Prentice broke in upon
their mental turmoil. "Did he use exactly those
words 'to their homes'?"
"'To their homes' yes."
"There you are," Prentice smiled to Jack.
"What is it, Jack?" Helen inquired, looking into
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Brookfield's face for the answer. Brookfield, per
plexed, shook his head and turned to the Justice.
"Men with vengeance or severity in their hearts,"
the old jurist commented, "would hardly say they
were anxious to get to their homes. They say, in that
case, the jury is anxious to get away, or to finish its
work."
"Oh, Mr. Justice, you pin hope upon such slight
things!" Helen sank into a chair. Prentice put one
hand over hers in his paternal manner.
"That is what hope is for, my dear Mrs. Whipple
the frail chances of this life."
Viola, who had gone to Helen's side, turned to
Brookfield. "And now, Uncle Jack, Mrs. Whipple
ought to have a cup of tea and something to eat."
"Oh, I couldn't," Helen pleaded; "we must go
back at once."
"Well, I could. I I must," the young girl said
to the group.
"Yes, you must both of you," Mrs. Campbell
urged.
Helen shook her head, again refusing, at which
Viola asked : " You don't think it's heartless, do you ?"
"You dear child!" Helen put her arms about the
girl whose sympathy and companionship had been
the most unwavering element in her own strength for
more than a year. She kissed her tenderly and gave
her to Mrs. Campbell, who led her from the library
and into the dining-room, where Uncle Harvey had
arranged refreshments.
"And now courage, my dear Helen," Jack com
forted; "it's almost over."
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" Oh, Jack, at the other trial the jury delayed just
this way!"
"Upon what point, Mrs. Whipple, did the jury ask
instructions?" Prentice inquired.
"Degree."
"And the Court?"
"Oh, Jack," Helen said, in returning terror, to
Brookfield, "the Judge answered: 'Guilty in the first
degree or not guilty."
"That all helps us," Prentice said.
"It does?"
Helen's answer from the Justice was a nod and one
of his confident and reposeful smiles.
"Who spoke for the jury?" Brookfield inquired.
"The foreman, and one other juryman asked a
question."
"Was it the man in the fourth chair, first row?"
"Yes," Helen replied.
Jack heaved a sigh of relief.
"Why?" pursued Helen.
" I think he's a friend, that's all." But there was
something in the calm of Brookfield's manner imply
ing more than his words expressed. There was also
a significant interchange of looks between the old
Justice and himself.
"Oh, Jack," Helen said, helplessly, "I should die
if it weren't for your courage!" She rose from the
sofa where she had half fallen when Viola left her and
came toward Jack. Brookfield took both her out
stretched hands. "You won't get tired of it," she
pleaded, " will you, and forsake my poor boy and me ?"
"What do you think?"
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THE WITCHING HOUR
"All our lawyers are kindness itself; but you, Jack
you somehow "
Viola returned from the dining-room, holding in her
hand a crumpled note of blue paper.
" Oh, Uncle Jack, here's a note our lawyer asked
me to give to you! I forgot it until this minute."
"Thank you." Jack took the note.
"Please try a cup of tea," Viola urged; but Helen
absent-mindedly pushed the girl away, her own at
tention anxiously riveted on Brookfield, who was
reading the note under the hooded electrolier which
he had turned on for the purpose. Viola returned to
her mother in the dining-room. Brookfield finished
the note, and handed it significantly to Prentice.
"What is it, Jack?" Helen asked. "Are they
afraid?"
" It's not about the trial at all."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you show it to me, then?"
" I will if my keeping it gives you so much alarm
as that."
Jack took the note from the Justice, who had read
it, and turned to Helen. "Colonel Bailey says:
" ' DEAR JACK, I've seen the paper. Hardmuth will shoot
on sight."!
"Oh, Jack if anything should happen to you!"
"Anything is quite as likely to happen to Mr.
Hardmuth." Jack took both her hands in the cover
ing, protective manner that had become habitual with
him toward Helen since the tragedy.
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"But not even that. My boy has killed a man,
and you, Jack you well, you just mustn't let it
happen that's all."
The appeal in her trembling whisper, the moisture
in her eyes as she looked up at him, was the most
satisfying answer that Brookfield had had during all
these months to his question asked on the night of
the opera asked in the same room, and beside the
table where they were now standing.
" I mustn't let it happen because ?" Jack waited.
"Because I couldn't bear it."
Jack bent over one of the hands he was holding and
kissed it.
XIV
HPHE old Justice was scanning the titles of the
1 Editions de luxe in their glass cases. Mrs. Camp
bell, with characteristic matter-of-fact ness, bustled in
from the dining-room.
"What was the letter, Jack?"
Brookfield, still holding Helen's hand, led her tow
ard the dining-room. He mechanically handed the
lawyer's note to his sister as he passed her, saying
to Helen: "And now I'll agree to do the best I can
for Mr. Hardmuth if you'll take a cup of tea and a
biscuit."
"There isn't time," Helen protested.
" There's plenty of time if the adjournment was for
an hour."
"Jack!" Mrs. Campbell cried, explosively, the blue
letter fluttering at arm's-length.
Brookfield turned, startled at the suddenness of the
outcry, and, divining its cause, he implored: "Just
one minute." Then gently yet firmly said to Helen:
"Go, please."
Helen joined Viola in the dining-room.
" He threatens your life!" exclaimed Mrs. Campbell,
interpreting the letter for him.
" Not exactly," Brookfield answered; " simply Colo
nel Bailey's opinion that he will shoot on sight."
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" Oh " Mrs. Campbell stamped her foot and turn
ed impatiently to the Justice for understanding and
appreciation.
"There is a difference, you know," Brookfield con
tinued, "my dear sister "
The entrance of Jo interrupted him.
"Well?"
"Mr. Ellinger, suh."
Lew came briskly into the room, in his hand a news
paper open and displayed.
"Hello, Jack!"
"Well, Lew!"
" Why, that's the damnedest thing " Then, as he
saw Mrs. Campbell, Lew apologized. "I beg your
pardon."
"Don't, please," the lady answered: "some manly
emphasis is a real comfort, Mr. Ellinger."
Lew bustled busily over to Brookfield.
"That charge of yours against Hardmuth is raisin'
more he he high feelin' than anything that ever
happened!"
"I saw the paper."
" You didn't see this it's an extra." And Lew be
gan to read, standing under the electrolier that Brook-
field had turned on for Colonel Bailey's letter. He
read, following the thrilling head-lines with his fore
finger, and looking over his glasses into Jack's face as
he pointed to the more sensational lines: " ' The Charge
Read to the Convention in Night Session at Frankfort
Bill Glover Hits Jim Macey on the Nose Devoe, of
Carter County, Takes Jim's Gun Away from Him The
Delegation from Butler Get Down on Their Stomachs
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THE WITCHING HOUR
and Crawl Under the Benches Some Statesmen Go
Through the Windows Convention Takes Recess Till
Morning Local Sheriff Swearin' in Deputies to Keep
Peace in the Bar-rooms.'" Lew let the paper fall to
his side and said, ominously, to Jack: "That's all
you've done."
"Good," said Brookfield; and then, with a note of
triumph, he added: "They can't nominate Mr. Hard-
muth now."
Lew turned to Mrs. Campbell. "I've been hedgin'
I told the fellows I'd bet Jack hadn't said it."
"Yes, I did say it," corrected Jack.
"In just those words?" Lew again spread the
paper under the electric light and read: "'The poor
fellow who crouched back of a window-sill and shot
Kentucky's governor-elect deserves hanging less than
the man whom he is shielding the man who laid the
plot of assassination, the present prosecuting attorney
by appointment Frank Allison Hardmuth. ' Did you
say that?"
" Lew, that there might be no mistake, I wrote it!"
And Brookfield brought his hand down with emphasis
upon Lew's shoulder. Ellinger emitted a long whistle
of prophetic consternation. Brookfield turned off the
electrolier, and the light in the room fell to its usual
volume.
When Ellinger could pull himself together after
his astonishment he inquired :
"Is it straight?"
"Yes."
" He was in the plot to kill the governor-elect ?"
"He organized it."
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"Well, what do you think of that?" Lew asked of
the surrounding atmosphere. " And now he's running
for governor himself a murderer!"
"Yes."
"And for six months he's been houndin' every
fellow in Louisville that sat down to a game of cards!"
Lew crossed to the Justice and in a confidential under
tone complained: "The damned rascal's nearly put
me in the poor-house."
"Poor old Lew," Jack laughed.
" Why, before I could go to that court-house to-day,"
Ellinger continued, "I had to take a pair of scissors
that I used to cut coupons with and trim the whiskers
off my shirt-cuffs." The deep indignity of this ca
lamity as he recalled it turned the old sport toward
Brookfield with something of resentment. " How long
have you known this?"
"Ever since the fact."
"Why do you spring it only now?"
"Because until now I lacked the character and
moral courage. I 'spring it' now by the advice of
Justice Prentice, to reach that convention at Frank
fort."
"Well, you reached them."
"The convention was only a secondary consid
eration with me," Justice Prentice said; "my real
objective was this jury with whom Mr. Hardmuth
seemed so powerful."
"Reach the jury?" Lew asked, not believing that
he had heard correctly.
"The jury!" Jack exclaimed, in a burst of en
thusiasm. Suddenly he grasped the significance of
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the fact in the light of his new philosophy. "Why,
of course the entire jury; and I was hoping hoping
for one man why, Alice "
"Why, they don't see the papers," Lew interrupt
ed; "the jury won't get a line of this."
"I think they will."
"You got 'em fixed?"
"Fixed? No!" Brookfield resented the question
as positively as he denied the fact.
"Then how will they see it?"
"How many people in Louisville have already
read that charge as you have read it?" Prentice
asked.
"Thirty thousand, maybe, but "
"And five hundred thousand in the little cities and
the towns. Do you think, Mr. Ellinger, that all those
minds can be at white-heat over that knowledge, and
none of it reach the thought of those twelve men?
Ah, no."
"To half a million good Kentuckians to-night
Frank Hardmuth is a detestable thing," Jack con
tinued, in the same strain, "and that jury's faith in
him is dead."
Ellinger blinked in helpless confusion. He tried to
grasp the idea, but all he could say was: "Why, Jack,
old man, you're dippy!"
"Then, Mr. Ellinger, I am ' dippy ' too," the Justice
tice added.
"Why, do you think the jury gets the public opin
ion without anybody tellin' them or their reading it ?"
Lew asked, impatiently.
"Yes. In every widely discussed trial the defend-
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ant is tried not alone by his twelve peers, but by the
entire community."
"Why, blast it, the community goes by what the
newspapers say!" Lew's good-nature was almost ex
hausted.
"That is often the regrettable part of it," Prentice
admitted, "but the fact remains."
Brookfield stood silent in rapt admiration of the
method of the Justice. If there was a uniform law,
and he believed that he had demonstrated its exist
ence, by which the active and aggressive thinking of
one mind could affect another, and if the intensity
of this effect increased as the battery of minds was
strengthened by additional numbers, Brookfield be
lieved that at the instigation of Prentice he had in
voked this law at the most crucial moment of his
existence, and had applied it in the most direct way
possible. The value of their act grew in his estima
tion when he recalled his reading on the psychology
of panics, of religious revivals and sentimental cru
sades which move like prairie-fires in their rapid com
munication between the units of a crowd. Despite
the incredulity of Ellinger and his sister, Brookfield
felt an unbounded hope in the force he had set in
motion, and which at that very moment was moving
with cumulative momentum upon the twelve men
sitting in deliberative conference in the jury-room at
the court-house. He clapped his hands, and turned to
the Justice enthusiastically.
"And that is why you asked me to expose Frank
Hardmuth?"
"Yes."
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Jack took Mrs. Campbell's arm and started for the
dining-room to communicate his new hope to Helen.
He was arrested by Ellinger's comment:
"Well, the public will think you did it because he
closed your game."
"Hardmuth didn't close my game."
"Who did?"
"This man." Jack, with deference and affection,
pointed to the Justice.
Prentice bowed.
"Well, how the he er Heaven's name did he
close it?"
"He gave my self-respect a slap on the back, Lew,
and I stood up."
Brookfield and his sister left the room. Lew fol
lowed slowly to the doorway, hoping for some greater
light to be shed upon the question. As illumination
failed he turned to the Justice and expressed his
mental condition in a single favorite expletive:
"Stung!"
The Justice was sufficiently familiar with the slang
of the period to be amused by Lew's laconic summary.
His smile gave Lew courage for some critical vent.
"So you are responsible for these new ideas of
Jack's?"
"In a measure," the Justice answered, as he took
a chair. ' ' Have the ideas apparently hurt Mr. Brook-
field?"
"They've put him out of business that's all."
Ellinger endeavored to conceal a sneer. *
"Which business?"
"Why, this house of his." Lew's hands involun-
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tarily trembled in the veriest descriptive sketch of a
deal as he nodded to the floor above, where the
gambling paraphernalia had formerly been.
"I see," said Prentice, comprehending. "But his
new ideas don't you like them, Mr. Ellinger?"
"I like Jack Brookfield, love him like a brother,
but I don't want even a brother askin' me if I'm sure
I've thought it over when I start in to take the halter
off for a pleasant evening. You get my idea ?"
"I begin to," Prentice confessed, trying to hide his
amusement.
"In other words," continued Lew, "I don't want
to take my remorse first it dampens the fun. The
other day a lady at the races said, 'We've missed you,
Mr. Ellinger,' and I said: 'Have you? Well, I'll be
up this evening.' ' A smile came over the old sport's
face, and a new light crept into it that explained to
Prentice's quick comprehension Lew's reputed popu
larity and the propriety of the ever-present pink in
the button-hole. "And I'm pressing her hand and
hanging onto it till I'm afraid I'll get the carriage
grease on my coat, feelin' only about thirty- two, you
know." He didn't look much older as he threw back
his lapels. "Then I turn round and Jack has those
sleepy lamps on me and bla!" Lew threw out his
hands and let them fall inertly. His knees sagged
under him, and with one pirouette he sank into the
sofa like an old fighter on the ropes.
"And you don't go?" Prentice concluded, when he
could command his gravity.
"I do go, as a matter of self-respect." Lew sat up,
full of resentful dignity. "But I don't make a hit.
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I'm thinking so much more about those morality
ideas of Jack's than I am about the lady that it
cramps my style, and we never get past the weather
and ' When did you hear from so and so ?'" Lew rose
from the sofa, disgusted with the memory of the in
effectual evening and the new ideas that had made
it possible. "I want to reform, all right I believe in
reform ; but first I want to have the fun of fallin', and
fallin' hard."
Jo's voice was heard in the hallway; it was as full
of alarm as if he had encountered a ghost. It rang
through the library and echoed in the dining-room,
where the startled hearers could scarcely believe the
import of its cry.
"'Fore God, Marse Clay!" And then Clay's voice
resounded in almost equal clearness in a hurry of
words, from the confusion of which his mother's name
might be distinguished. Mrs. Campbell was the first
to enter the library.
"Why, that's Clay!" she exclaimed.
"It's the boy!" announced Lew.
"His mother!" fearfully breathed Mrs. Campbell.
She faltered in an impulse to turn back toward Helen,
but Clay was already in the library and in Mrs. Camp
bell's embrace as Prentice simultaneously said : " Ac
quittal."
Brookfield took one step into the dining-room, and
was just in time to support Helen.
"My boy!" Helen cried. She tottered toward
him.
Clay sobbed "Mother!" and sank to his knees, his
face buried in her gown. The joy of his release found
214
vent in tears as there came over him a surging real
ization of the suffering he had caused.
Helen swayed, and 'would have fallen but for Jack's
strong arm. With a sharp grip of the shoulder he
said, in stimulating severity:
"He's free, Helen; he's free!"
"Yes, mother, I'm free!" Clay rose to his feet,
his arms about his mother.
Helen's face sank on his breast. There was a
hushed silence, in which the members of the party
heard her sobbing whisper: "My boy! my boy!"
Jack left them and crossed the room, greeting
Colonel Bailey, who had accompanied Clay to the
house and now followed him into the room. Helen,
roused by the stir about her, looked up and be
yond her son to where Viola was standing by Mrs.
Campbell, her fingers locked in a joy almost as in
tense and inarticulate as Helen's. The mother gen
erously turned Clay's face and pointed to the girl.
"Viola, my brave sweetheart!" Clay whispered, as
he took her in his arms.
"Is it really over?" Viola asked.
"Yes."
Jack was shaking Colonel Bailey's hand.
"It's a great victory, Colonel. If ever a lawyer
made a good fight for a man's life, you did. Helen,
Viola you must want to shake this man's hand."
Viola, who was nearest, took the hand of the at
torney as she met him.
"I could have thrown my arms around you when
you made that speech."
The old cavalier shook his head gallantly. "Too
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many young fellows crowding into the profession as
it is."
The lawyer passed on to Helen, who said: "Life
must be sweet to a man who can do so much good as
you do."
"I couldn't stand it, you know," Bailey bantered,
defensively, "if it wasn't that my ability works both
ways."
" Marse Clay!" It was the trembling voice of Uncle
Harvey, who, finding his dining-room deserted, had
come into the library.
"Harvey! Why, dear old Harvey!"
Clay took him by both hands. The old darky
proceeded to pat him on arms and shoulders, to be
doubly sure that the boy was really back.
" Yes, suh yes, suh could you eat anything,
Marse Clay?"
"Eat anything!" laughed the boy. "Why, I'm
starving, Uncle Harvey!"
" Yes, suh." The old man capered from the
room.
"But you come with me," said Clay to his mother
and Viola.
"My boy, Colonel," Helen apologized, as she left
the room with Clay, taking Viola with her.
Bailey and Mrs. Campbell followed. Ellinger, who
was the last of the procession to quit Brookfield and
Prentice, said, as he left the room:
"Well, I don't believe I could eat anything but I
suppose there'll be something else."
Brookfield took from the table the threatening let
ter of Hardmuth.
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"Justice Prentice," he said, "I shall never doubt
you again."
"Mr. Brookfield," the Justice answered, impressive
ly, "never doubt yourself."
Brookfield 's hand was above his head in touch
with the button of the electrolier. There was
the sound of rushing footsteps in the hallway.
Hardmuth, livid of countenance, dashed into the
room.
"You think you'll send me to the gallows; but,
damn you, you go first!"
Both hands were struggling to free from his over
coat-pocket a double-barrelled derringer that had
caught in the lining. The weapon was freed; there
was the double click of the hammer as Hardmuth
pushed it against Brookfield's body.
"Stop!" As if released by Brookfield's word
the full light of the electrolier fell into Hardmuth's
eyes.
Behind Brookfield one hand of the old Justice point
ed at Hardmuth in silent but riveting command.
Hardmuth's thought seemed to desert him. He felt
in his face the glare of the light; he saw Brook-
field's eyes, like two burning coals from which it
was impossible to take his gaze. Behind Brook-
field, in the circle of half-light, he felt rather than
saw the eyes of Prentice. Through a haze of con
sciousness he heard Brookfield's level monotone
slow, compelling:
" You can't use that gun you can't pull the trig
ger you can't even hold the gun!"
Hardmuth heard the sound of the derringer as it
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dropped from his inert grasp and struck the floor.
And then again the voice of Brookfield :
"Now, Frank, you may go."
Hardmuth felt as one waking from a dream. In
an awed and throaty whisper he said: "I'd like to
know how in hell you did that to me!"
XV
"\ \ 7 HEN Hardmuth reached the street the newsboys,
V V who came as far south as Brookfield's only on
extraordinary occasions, were crying the extras, with
the report of Whipple's acquittal and the discovery of
the Scovil murderer.
Hardmuth's impulse was flight.
He remembered that he had often commented on
the lack of intelligence shown by criminals in flight.
It had been easy to reconstruct the route of a fugitive
from the report of his mistakes in the paper, or to
show how he had lost time that had been fatal to him
by aimlessly doubling on his tracks or stupidly hid
ing where his pursuers would most naturally search
for him.
His great need consequently, he reasoned, was for
a few minutes' calm reflection: if only he could have
half an hour in his own room he was certain he could
plan a means of escape from the arrest that was doubt
less now under way ; but he dared not go to his room.
This must have been clear to his subconscious mind
from the first as an instinct had guided his steps before
his reason approved it, for he found himself walking
swiftly away from the heart of the town. The night
was bitter cold; few pedestrians were out. Hard
muth's direction would soon take him from the city,
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THE WITCHING HOUR
but it would also take him into the State. His hope
lay in reaching Indiana.
If he could only get some perspective upon himself.
How would he advise another in his situation who
might come to him for counsel ? As he revolved this
question in his mind the two voices of his subjective
and objective self entered into debate:
" What are you going to do ? Don't let this rattle
you brace up and answer me."
"Do? I don't know. What do you advise me to do ?"
"Get under cover keep still for a day or two.
Brookfield has probably telephoned headquarters be
fore this that you're running away, and the police
are watching every bridge and highway."
Hardmuth had been walking south. He turned
east over Ormsby Street and into Bainbridge. On
that side of Louisville there lies a little chain of grave
yards (St. Michael's, St. Louis, and Cave Hill), sepa
rated from one another by only a few blocks. At the
end of an hour's walk Hardmuth was skirting the
outside of Cave Hill Cemetery, the last of the chain,
and coming into the district of railroad tracks. Sud
denly he pulled up this was commonplace and stupid.
He was treading the very ground where he himself,
in the discharge of his duty, would have directed the
police to search for some besotted heeler who might
have killed his sweetheart in a drunken jealousy!
Could he, in his emergency, do nothing original?
Was there a stencil for the plans of the criminal?
Probably all men tired and cold and hungry and
hunted were much alike.
He had had no dinner. The day and evening had
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been filled with exciting events. The reaction from
the rush of murderous fury, checked only at the last
moment when about to vent its hate, had left him
weary. Strange how Brookfield did that! Some
unusual shock something he could not account for
in his experience had stayed his hand when Brook-
field turned on that light and those two pairs of glow
ing eyes had burned into his brain. He almost reeled
at the thought of it, and his hand instinctively went
up to his eyes, as if he would shut out the sight. He
pulled himself together and laughed aloud at his
weakness. At this rate his strength and endurance
would soon run out, and some patrolman would find
him on the pavement before morning. He resolved
to go to one of the cheaper hotels near the river, and
take the small chance of recognition. He would have
food and three or four stiff drinks, which, God knew,
he needed. He would have a bed and a chance to
sleep, and sleep late; and then, if they hadn't found
him, he could wait until night again, when he might
look up some friends whose interest it would be to
assist him.
As he reached this decision he found himself cross
ing Jackson Street. This avenue was illuminated by
a string of arc-lights hung on a single line, gemlike,
through its entire length. Hardmuth paused. He
recognized the neighborhood. At the foot of this
street lived a colored woman who had once been a
servant in his mother's home; her house would be
a surer refuge than a hotel; besides, she would be a
safe messenger in communicating with his friends.
He turned north, and moved along Jackson Street
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toward the river; not another human being was in
sight. The only evidence of life was a little light in
the watch - tower of the signal - man who controlled
the barriers guarding the railway crossing. He pass
ed the Chesapeake & Ohio big freight-house, through
the grilled end of which came that damp odor of
traffic blent of sugar, tobacco, and sacked coffee. He
crossed the tracks, and went on through the shadows
of the colossal pipe and foundry company. One
block farther on he paused. On his left two mon
strous piles the city's gas-tanks loomed into the
twinkling, frosty night. Against the sky-line to his
right, a block or two away, was silhouetted the faint
tracery of the railway bridge, broken by the battery
of smoke-stacks above a rambling foundry. About
him on the cinders and brick fill-in were old and
rusting boilers, gigantic spools of unused cable, and
gnarled and twisted heaps of iron. In their midst,
and from a lower level, peeped the chimney of Mandy's
cottage. A little fence of uneven and unequal boards
made a pretence at enclosure.
Through the maze of rubbish Hardmuth groped his
way. He mounted the flight of rickety steps that
led up over the half story which formed a basement
to the house and rapped on the door. From within
came a challenge. Hardmuth answered:
"That you, Mandy? Is George there? Open the
door."
There was a shuffling of footsteps, then the strik
ing of a match; a light shone through a crack in the
weather-warped panel of the door, a hand fell on the
knob, a man's voice asked:
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"Who is it?"
"Me, George Mandy knows my voice put out
the light before you open the door."
The woman's voice was heard in lower tone:
"It's Marse Frank blowout de light, like he done
tell you."
The light went out; the door opened; the prose
cuting attorney disappeared into the shadow, a fugi
tive from justice.
The evening after the trial Viola and Clay sat to
gether in the library of the Brookfield house. It
had been a day of incident and excitement.
"I must really say good-night and let you get some
sleep," Viola said, sympathetically.
"Not before Jack gets home," Clay pleaded. "Our
mothers have considerately left us alone together;
they'll just as inconsiderately tell us when it's time
to part."
"My mother said it was time half an hour ago."
"Wait until Jack comes in," Clay coaxed.
The young darky, Jo, brought in a card.
"Dey's another reporter to see you, suh."
"Send him away," Viola directed. "Mr. Whipple
won't see any more reporters."
"Wait a minute, "said Clay. "Who is he?" Jo hand
ed him the card. "I've got to see this one, Viola."
"Why got to?"
"He's a friend. I'll see him, Jo."
"Yes, suh." Jo left the room.
"You've said that all day they're all friends,"
Viola remonstrated.
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"Well, they are; but this boy especially. It was
fine to see you and mother and Jack when I was
in that jail great; but you were there daytimes.
This boy spent hours on the other side of the bars
helping me pass the awful nights. I tell you, death-
cells would be pretty nearly hell if it wasn't for the
police reporters; ministers ain't in it with 'em."
Jo ushered the reporter into the room.
"How are you, Ned?" Clay took his hand, greet
ing him cordially. "You know Miss Campbell, Mr.
Emmett."
The reporter nodded affably; Viola bowed.
"Have a chair."
"Thank you." Emmett looked about the warm
and luxurious room. "This is different, isn't it?"
"Some," returned Clay, in the national habit of
understatement.
"Satisfied the way we handled the story?" Emmett
asked, as he took the offered chair.
"Perfectly; you were just bully, old man."
"That artist of ours is only a kid, and they work
him to death on the 'Sunday,'" Emmett explained
to Viola; "so" apologetically to Clay "you under
stand, don't you?"
"Oh, I got used to the pictures a year ago."
There was an awkward pause ; then Emmett coughed
and proposed: "Anything you want to say?"
"For the paper?" Viola asked.
"Yes."
"I think not," Clay answered.
Just then Helen and Alice came into the room.
"You have met my mother?" said Clay. Emmett
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answered, "No"; and Clay introduced him, adding,
proudly : "This is Mr. Emmett, of whom I've told you."
"Oh, the good reporter!" Helen exclaimed, appre
ciatively.
"Gee! That would be a wonder if the gang heard
it!" Emmett whispered, laughingly, to Clay; then in
assent to Helen: "We got pretty well acquainted
yes'm."
"Won't you sit down, Mr. Emmett?" Mrs. Camp
bell asked.
"Thank you. I guess we've covered everything,"
the reporter continued, in the business-like manner of
his profession ; ' ' but the chief wanted me to see your
son" turning to Helen and then to Clay "and see
if you'd do the paper a favor."
"If possible gladly."
"I don't like the assignment because well, for
the very reason that it was handed to me, and that
is because we're more or less friendly."
Brookfield came in briskly from the hall. He was
still wearing the great fur coat he had worn in the
automobile, and carried in his hand his cap and
goggles.
"Well, it's a wonderful night outside," he said,
joyously.
"You're back early," his sister offered.
"Purposely. How are you, Emmett?" The re
porter bowed. "I thought you girls might like a
little run in the moonlight before I put up the ma
chine," Jack explained.
"Mr. Emmett has some message from his editor,"
Helen said.
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"What is it?"
"There's a warrant out for Hardmuth you saw
that?" Emmett asked of the entire group.
"Yes, we saw that," Viola said.
"To-night's paper," Jack added.
"If they get him," Emmett continued, "and he
comes to trial and all that, it will be the biggest trial
Kentucky ever saw."
"Well?" Clay prompted.
" Well, the paper wants you to agree to report it for
them the trial. There'll be other papers after you,
of course."
"Oh no!" Viola exclaimed, horrified, going in
stinctively to Clay's side.
"Understand, Clay, I'm not asking it," Emmett
said, apologetically. " I'm here under orders, just as
I'd be at a fire or a bread riot."
"And of course" Clay hesitated, searching for a
diplomatic refusal "you understand, don't you?"
"Perfectly," the reporter answered. "I told the
chief myself you wouldn't see it."
"Paper's been too friendly for me to assume any
any"
"Unnecessary dignity," Jack suggested.
"Exactly; but I just couldn't do that, you see."
"Oh, leave it to me; I'll let you down easy," Em
mett assured him.
"Thank you."
"You expect to be in Europe or "
"But I don't."
"We're going to stay right here in Louisville,"
Viola declared, putting her hand in Clay's.
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"Yes," added the boy, "and work out my my re
habilitation among the people who know me."
" Of course," Emmett said, understandingly. " Eu
rope's just to stall off the chief to get him off on
some other dope."
Helen rose anxiously from the sofa with the impulse
of protest.
" It's all right," Jack said to her.
"I hate to begin with a falsehood."
"Not your son, Mrs. Whipple me," Emmett laugh
ed. He turned to Jack. "I saw some copy on our
telegraph desk, Mr. Brookfield, that would interest
you."
"Yes?"
" Or maybe you know of it ? Frankfort?"
"No."
"Some friend named you in the caucus."
"What connection?"
"Governor."
"Uncle Jack?" Viola asked, enthusiastically.
"Yes'm that is, for the nomination."
All looked at Brookfield. There was but a mo
ment's serious consideration for Jack before he
laughed :
"It's a joke."
" Grows out of these Hardmuth charges, of course,"
Emmett assented, smiling.
"That's all," Jack answered.
The reporter said good-night and left the room.
Clay, after accompanying him to the door, returned,
his face set and bearing the stamp of malignant de
termination.
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"If it weren't for the notoriety of it, I'd like to do
that."
"My son!" Helen exclaimed, reproachfully.
" Why would you like to do it ?" Jack asked, quietly.
"To get even. I'd like to see Hardmuth suffer as
he made me suffer; I'd like to watch him suffer and
write of it."
"That's a bad spirit to face the world with, my
boy."
"I hate him!"
" Hatred is heavier freight for the shipper than it is
for the consignee."
"I can't help it."
"Yes, you can. Mr. Hardmuth should be of the
utmost indifference to you; to hate him is weak."
"Weak?" Viola interjected.
"Yes, weak-minded," pursued her uncle. "Hard
muth was in love with you at one time he hated
Clay. He said Clay was as weak as dish-water, and ' '
facing the boy and looking him straight in the eyes
"you were at that time. You've had your lesson
profit by it its meaning was self-control. Begin
now if you are going to be the custodian of this girl's
happiness."
"I'm sure he means to, Jack," Helen interposed.
" You can carry your hatred of Hardmuth and let
it embitter your whole life, or you can drop it so."
Jack let fall on the table the book he had taken up.
"The power that any man or any thing has to annoy
us we give him or it by our interest. Some idiot told
your great-grandmother that a jewel with different
colored strata in it was 'bad luck' or a 'hoodoo.' She
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believed it, and she nursed her faith and passed the
lunacy on to your grandmother."
"Jack, don't talk of that, please/' Helen protested.
"I'll skip one generation; but I'd like to talk of it."
"Why talk of it?" Mrs. Campbell ventured to ask.
"It was only a notion, and an effort of will can
banish it." Jack was again speaking to the boy.
"It was more than a notion."
" Tom Denning' s scarf - pin, which he dropped
there " he pointed to the floor "was an exhibit in
your trial; Colonel Bailey returned it to me to-day."
Brookfield put his hand in his pocket.
"I wish you wouldn't, Uncle Jack," Viola said,
timidly.
"You don't mind, do you?" Brookfield asked Clay.
" I'd rather not look at it to-night." The boy's face
was averted, his voice trembled.
"You needn't look at it," Brookfield said, quietly;
" I'll hold it in my hand, and you put your hand over
mine."
" I really don't see the use in this experiment, Jack,"
Mrs. Campbell fluttered. Clay had obediently placed
one hand over Brookfield 's, but he still kept his eyes
averted.
"That doesn't annoy you, does it?" Brookfield
asked.
"I'm controlling myself, sir," the boy answered,
through shut teeth, "but I feel the influence of that
thing all through and through me."
"Jack!" Helen pleaded.
Viola turned away, unable to bear the sight of the
boy's suffering.
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"Down your back, isn't it?" Jack persisted, relent-
lessly, "and in the roots of your hair tingling?"
"Yes."
"Why torture him?" Helen demanded.
"Is it torture?" Jack asked of Clay.
"I shall be glad when it's over, sir," the boy
answered, with an additional effort at self-con
trol.
"What rot!" Brookfield threw oS Clay's hand. He
opened his own. "That's only my night-key look
at it!" The boy turned and looked. " I haven't the
scarf-pin about me!"
"Why make me think it was the scarf-pin?" Clay
asked, with a considerable show of frightened indig
nation.
"To prove to you that it's only thinking that's all.
Now, be a man. The cat's-eye itself is in that table
drawer. Get it, and show Viola that you're not a neu
ropathic idiot." Clay crossed to the table. "You're a
child of the everlasting God, and nothing on the earth
or under it can harm you in the slightest degree!"
Clay had opened the drawer and taken from it the
scarf-pin; he held it at arm's -length before him.
"That's the spirit look at it!" Brookfield took Clay
by the wrist and pushed the jewel immediately be
fore his eyes. "Look at it close I've made many a
young horse do that to an umbrella now give it to
me." Brookfield took the scarf-pin and carried it to
Viola. " You're not afraid of it ?"
"Of course I'm not," the girl smiled.
Brookfield stuck the pin in the lace at her throat.
He turned to Clay.
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"Now, if you want my niece, go up to that ' hoodoo*
like a man."
His fear of the jewel now apparently under com
plete control, Clay went up to Viola and took her in
his arms.
"Oh, Jack!" Helen exclaimed, happily, "do you
think that will last?"
"Which?" Brookfield asked, with a laugh " indif
ference to the ' hoodoo ' or partiality to my niece?"
"They'll both last," Clay answered, with resolu
tion.
" Now, my boy " Jack turned to him, his serious
ness resumed "drop your hatred of Hardmuth as
you drop your fear of the scarf-pin. Don't look
back your life is ahead of you; don't mount for
the race overweighted."
Jo announced Mr. Ellinger. Lew had followed him
to the doorway, and entered the dining-room behind
him.
"I don't intrude, do I?" It was almost a chal
lenge.
"Come in."
Lew was in a gale of excitement. He greeted the
ladies affably; he turned to the young people.
"Ah, Clay, glad to see you looking so well; glad
to see you in such good company 1" And then to
Jack, in triumph: "I've got him!"
"Got whom?" said Brookfield.
" Hardmuth. Detectives been hunting him all day,
you know."
"He's caught, you say?" Helen asked, excitedly.
"No; but I've treed him." Ellinger turned to
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Brookfield. "And I thought I'd just have a word
with you before passing the tip. He's nearly put
me in the poor-house with his raids and closing laws,
and I see a chance to get even."
"In what way?" Brookfield asked.
" They've been after him. nearly twenty-four hours
morning paper's going to offer a reward for him,
and I understand the State will also. If I had a lit
tle help I'd hide him for a day or two, and then sur
render him for those rewards."
"Where is Hardmuth?"
"HidinV
"Naturally," Brookfield commented.
" You remember ' Big George' ?"
"The darky?"
"Yes; used to be on the door at Phil Kelly's."
"Yes."
"He's there in 'Big George's' cottage long
story." Lew turned with an air of importance to the
ladies. " ' Big George's ' wife that is she " El-
linger hesitated as his eyes fell on Viola. " Well, his
wife used to be pantry-maid for Hardmuth's mother.
When they raided Kelly's game 'Big George' pre
tended to turn State's evidence, but he really hates
Hardmuth like a rattler so it all comes back to me.
You see, if I'd win a couple of hundred at Kelly's I
used to slip George a ten goin' out." This explana
tion was unctuously given to the ladies: "Your luck
always stays by you if you divide a little with a
nigger or a hump-back, and in Louisville it's easier
to find a nigger. So "
"He's there now?" Brookfield interrupted.
232
THE WITCHING HOUR
" Yes. He wants to get away. He's got two guns,
and he'll shoot before he gives up, so I'd have to
'con* him some way. George's wife is to open the
door to Kelly's old signal you remember one
knock, then two, and then one." Ellinger acted out
the signal, rapping on the table.
"Where is the cottage?"
"Hundred and seven Jackson Street little door-
yard border of arbor- vitae on the path."
Jack took a sheet of paper and envelope from the
table-rack and began to write.
"One knock, then two, and then one?" he asked,
without looking up.
"What you goin' to do?" Ellinger inquired, alertly.
"Send for him."
" Who you goin' to send ?" There was a suggestion
of physical recoil as the old sport asked the question.
"That boy there," Brookfield answered.
"Me?" Clay rose to his feet.
"Yes."
"Oh no no!" Helen exclaimed, aghast.
"And my niece," Brookfield added.
"What!" Viola cried, in alarm. "To arrest a
man?"
" My machine is at the door," Brookfield instructed
Clay. " Give Hardmuth this note he will come with
you quietly. Bring him here. We will decide what
to do with him after that."
" I can't allow Viola to go on such an errand," Mrs.
Campbell protested to her brother.
" When the man she has promised to marry is going
into danger?" Brookfield upbraided his sister.
233
THE WITCHING HOUR
"If Mr. Hardmuth will come for that note, why
can't I deliver it?" Viola inquired, with an undefined
impulse for the heroic.
"You may," her uncle answered, smiling, "if Clay
will let you." He extended the note to the girl ; Clay
took it from him before Viola could do so.
"I'll hand it to him."
"I hope so," Brookfield answered. He took his
fur coat and goggles from the chair where he had
laid them. "Take these," he said, handing them to
Clay. "Remember: one rap, then two, then one."
"I understand," said the boy; "number "
" Hundred and seven Jackson Street," Ellinger sup
plied.
"I protest," Mrs. Campbell once more interposed.
"So do I," said Helen, joining her.
Jack turned to the younger couple.
" You're both of age I ask you to do it. If you
give Hardmuth the goggles nobody will recognize
him, and with a lady beside him you'll get him safely
here."
"Come!" said Clay, decisively, to Viola.
"I ought to be in the party!" Ellinger called, bus
tling after them.
"No," Brookfield commanded, "you stay here."
"That's scandalous!" Mrs. Campbell pronounced,
in high dudgeon with her brother.
"But none of us will start the scandal, will we?"
Brookfield asked his sister, in aggravating calm.
Helen turned to him and said: "Clay knows noth
ing of that kind of work. A man with two guns
think of it!"
234
THE WITCHING HOUR
"After he's walked barehanded up to a couple of
guns a few times he'll quit fearing men armed only
with a scarf-pin," Brookfield replied.
"It's cruel to keep constantly referring to that
mistake of Clay's. I want to forget it."
Jack took Helen's hand tenderly in his own.
"The way to forget it, my dear Helen, is not to
guard it, a sensitive spot in your memory, btft to
grasp it as the wise ones grasp a nettle crush all its
power to harm you in one courageous contact. We
think things are calamities and trials and sorrows
only names; they are spiritual gymnastics, and have
an eternal value when once you confront them and
make them crouch at your feet. Say once for all
to your soul, and thereby to the world: 'Yes, my
boy killed a man because I'd brought him up a
half -effeminate, hysterical weakling; but he's been
through the fire, I've been through the fire, and we're
both the better for it.'"
"I can say that truthfully," Helen half sobbed,
"but I don't want to make a policeman of him just
the same." She withdrew her hand from Jack's, and,
on the verge of tears, went out of the room, followed
by Mrs. Campbell, who added, disapprovingly, as she
left:
"Your treatment is a little too heroic, Jack!"
16
XVI
T EW waited anxiously until Jack had lighted a cigar,
JL*/ and then, unable to restrain his impatience longer,
he asked:
"Think they'll fetch him?"
"Yes."
"He'll come, of course, if he does under the idea
that you'll help him when he gets here."
"Yes."
"Pretty hard double-cross," Lew ruminated, "but
he deserves it." There was a pause, and then he went
on, confidentially: "I've got a note of fifteen thou
sand to meet to-morrow or, damn it, I don't think
I'd fancy this man-huntin'. I put up some Louis
ville & Nashville bonds for security, and the holder
of the note will be only too anxious to pinch 'em."
Brookfield took a check-book from the drawer of
the table and began to write, saying as he did so :
"You can't get your rewards in time for that."
"I know, and that's one reason I come to you,
Jack. If you see I'm in a fair way to get the re
wards "
"I'll lend you the money " Jack took him up.
"Thank you I thought you would. If I lose those
bonds they'll have me selling programmes for a livin'
at a grandstand. You see, I thought hatin' Hardmuth
236
THE WITCHING HOUR
as you do, and your reputation bein* up through that
stuff in the papers "
"There." Brookfield handed Ellinger the check.
"Thank you, old man." Lew scanned the check.
"I'll hand this back to you in a week."
"You needn't."
"What!"
"You needn't hand it back. It's only fifteen thou
sand, and you've lost a hundred of them at poker in
these rooms."
"Never belly-ached, did I?"
"Never." Brookfield smiled. "But you don't owe
me that fifteen."
"Rot! I'm no baby. Square game, wasn't it?"
"Perfectly."
"And I'll sit in a square game any time I get a
chance." Ellinger folded the check and put it into
his vest-pocket.
"I know, Lew, all about that."
" I'll play you for this fifteen right now. ' ' Ellinger's
fingers had not left the paper, and they reproduced it
from his pocket with comical eagerness.
"No."
"Ain't had a game in three weeks." There was
a genuine note of appeal in the voice. "Besides, I
think my luck's changin'. When 'Big George' told
me about Hardmuth, I took George's hand before I
thought what I was doin', and you know what shakin'
hands with a nigger does just before any play."
"No, thank you, Lew," Jack repeated.
"My money's good as anybody else's, ain't it?" the
old gamester badgered.
237
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Just as good, but "
"Tain't a phoney check, is it?" EUinger scanned
the paper with close scrutiny.
"The check is all right," Brookfield said, restrain
ing his amusement with difficulty.
"Losing your nerve?" Ellinger taunted.
' ' No !' ' Brookfield was immediately ashamed of the
anger in his tone. "Suppose you shuffle those cards
and deal a hand." He pointed to the side-table upon
which a deck of cards was lying.
' 'That's like old times." Lew brightened. "What
is it stud-horse or draw?"
"Draw, if you say so." Brookfield went to the
opposite side of the room, where he stood in front of
the fireplace.
"I cut 'em?" Lew inquired, as he finished the
shuffle.
"You cut them."
Ellinger was dealing. "Table stakes this check
goes for a thousand."
"That suits me."
"Sit down," Lew invited, eager for the game.
"I don't need to sit down just yet,-" Brookfield said,
from his position before the fire.
"As easy as that, am I?" Ellinger grumbled. He
was squeezing his five cards and cautiously reading
their marginal characters. There was a moment's
pause as Brookfield gazed into the fire.
"Lew."
"Yes."
"Do you happen to have three queens?"
Ellinger drew his cards toward him in instinctive
238
THE WITCHING HOUR
defence, gave a startled look at Brookfield, whose
back was to him, turned the cards over, examining
them with expert eye and touch, then looked at the
remaining cards in the deck.
"Well, I can't see it," he said.
"No use looking they're not marked."
"Well, I shuffled them all right?"
"Yes," Brookfield assented.
"And cut 'em?"
Brookfield nodded.
"Couldn't have been a cold deck?"
"No," said Jack.
"Then how did you know I had three queens?"
"I didn't know it I just thought you had." Brook-
field spoke slowly and sadly as he returned to the cen
tre of the room.
"Can you do it again?"
"I don't know." Brookfield paused. "Draw one
card."
Ellinger obeyed. "All right."
"Is it the ace of hearts ?" Brookfield asked, without
looking toward him.
"It is." Ellinger put down the card in a hush of
wonderment. Brookfield took the cigar from his lips
and slowly ground out its light in the bronze ash
tray on the table. He was as visibly affected as
Ellinger, though in quite a different way.
"Turns me into a rotter, doesn't it?" he commented,
sadly.
"Can you do that every time?" Lew's inquiry had
a suspicious alertness.
"I never tried it until to-night," Brookfield an-
239
THE WITCHING HOUR
swered, slowly "that is, consciously. I've always
had luck, and I thought it was because I took chances
on a guess, same as any player; but that doesn't
look like it, does it?"
"Beats me," Ellinger confessed.
"And what a monster it makes of me these years
I've been in the business."
"You say you didn't know it before?" Ellinger re
peated, his little eyes a-glitter with interest.
"I didn't know it no; but some things have hap
pened lately that made me think it might be so : that
jury yesterday" Brookfield recurred to the event
with impressive solemnity "some facts I've had from
Justice Prentice telepathy of a very common kind,
and I guess it's used in a good many games, old man,
we aren't on to." Brookfield was half sitting on the
large table in the centre of the room. Lew leaned
forward on the edge of his chair at the little card-
table opposite him.
"Well, have you told anybody?"
"No."
' ' Good ! ' * Lew stood up in great excitement. ' ' Now
see here, Jack" he came quickly to Brookfield "if
you can do that right along I know a game in Cincin
nati where it would be like takin' candy from children."
"Good God!" Brookfield exploded. He turned
with an impulse of denunciation upon the old gambler
at his side. One look into Lew's keen face, however,
convinced him that there was no room for moral con
sideration in the undiluted rascality of Lew's inten
tion. Brookfield could only say: "You're not sug
gesting that I keep it up?"
240
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Don't overdo it no," said the old man, cautiously;
"or you show me the trick and I'll collect all right."
Brookfield was thinking.
"Lew," he said, slowly, when at length he spoke,
"some of the fellows I've won from in this house
have gone over into the park and blown their heads
off."
"Some of the fellows anybody wins from, in any
house, go somewhere and blow their heads off," Lew
drawled, discouragingly.
"True," Brookfield said.
"Three queens," Ellinger murmured, with growing
wonder "before the draw well, you could have
had me all right. And you won't tell me how you do
it?" he pleaded, sadly.
"I don't know how I do it the thought just comes
to my mind stronger than any other thought."
Lew fixed his disapproving gaze upon Brookfield,
and in the very superlative of rebuke exclaimed:
"God A'mighty gives you a mind like that, and you
won't go with me to Cincinnati!"
Jo entered, and announced Justice Prentice.
"Ask him to step up here," Brookfield ordered.
He then went to the door of the dining-room, and
called to his sister and Helen: "Justice Prentice is
coming up, and I'd like you to join us!"
Lew was again affectionately regarding the five
cards he had dealt himself.
"Can the old man call a hand like that, too?" he
asked Brookfield.
"I'm sure he could," said Jack.
"And are there others?" Ellinger inquired, his
241
THE WITCHING HOUR
sense of wonder at the trick overborne by sudden
hopelessness.
" I believe there are a good many others who un
consciously have the same ability."
"Well, it's a God's blessin' there's a sucker born
every minute. I'm a widow and an orphan 'long-
side of that." Lew threw the cards on the table in
disgust.
"Been losing, Mr. Ellinger?" Mrs. Campbell in
quired, as she and Helen came into the room.
" Losing ? I just saved fifteen thousand I was goin*
to throw away like sand in a rat-hole. I'm a babe
eatin' spoon- victuals, and only gettin' half at that."
Lew sorrowfully replaced the check in his pocket.
The Justice came into the room.
"I stopped at your hotel, Mr. Justice," Jack said,
"but you were out."
"Yes," Prentice explained, "I have been making
a few parting calls, and I stopped "
The hurried entrance of Viola and Mrs. Campbell's
exclamation at sight of her interrupted the Justice.
"Where's Clay?" Helen asked, with repressed ex
citement.
"Down-stairs."
Viola greeted the Justice and turned to Brookfield,
who excused himself to the others, and, stepping aside
with his niece, inquired:
"Did the gentleman come with you?"
"Yes."
Ellinger overheard this reply, and his own ner
vousness added to the uneasiness of the group.
"Won't you ask Clay, my dear," Brookfield con-
242
THE WITCHING HOUR
tinued to Viola, " to take him through the lower hall
and into the dining-room until I'm at liberty?"
"Certainly." Viola left on her errand.
"I am keeping you from other appointments,"
Prentice said.
"Nothing that can't wait."
Brookfield offered him a chair, but the Justice de
clined it, and going to the ladies he extended his
hand.
"I am leaving for Washington in the morning."
"We shall all be at the train to see you off, Mr.
Justice," said Brookfield.
"That's good, because I should like to say good
bye to the young people I can see them there. I
sha'n't see you then, Mr. Ellinger?" Prentice crossed
to where Lew was still standing by the three queens,
gone but not forgotten. He extended his hand.
"Good-bye, Mr. Justice," said Lew; "you've given
me more of a 'turnover' than you know."
"Really?"
" I'd 'a' saved two hundred thousand dollars if I'd
met you thirty years ago."
"Well, that's only a little over six thousand a
year, isn't it?"
"That's so; and, damn it, I have lived!" At this
statement, and with the recollection behind it, there
came into Lew's ruddy-duck smile that unctuous
suggestion of good feeling which was peculiarly his
own. The smile abided, and the retrospection grew
during the succeeding moments in which the Justice
was bidding farewell to the ladies and leaving Jack
in the hallway.
243
THE WITCHING HOUR
As Jack returned, his sister, who had been looking
into the dining-room, came quickly to him.
"Is that Hardmuth in there?" she asked, nodding
over her shoulder.
"Yes," Jack answered.
"I don't want to see him."
"Very well, dear; I'll excuse you."
"Come, Helen." Mrs. Campbell left the room.
"I'd like you to stay," Jack said to Helen.
"Me?"
"Yes."
Left alone with Helen and Ellinger, Brookfield
crossed to the dining-room door and opened it.
"Come in," he said.
Viola entered, followed by Hardmuth and Clay.
In her excitement she had forgotten to lay off the fur
coat which she had worn in the automobile. As
Brookfield removed the coat from her shoulders he
said to her:
" Your mother has just left us, Viola ; you had bet
ter join her."
"Very well." As the girl started to go out her
uncle took her hand, detaining her a moment.
" I want you to know, my dear, how thoroughly I
appreciate your going on this errand for me. You're
the right stuff!" Jack kissed her affectionately;
Viola left the room.
Brookfield turned to Hardmuth, who was standing
by the side of Clay. Hardmuth was haggard and
had a hunted look. He wore a dark overcoat of
some light material; in his hand he held the auto
mobile goggles which Clay had given him. Brook-
244
THE WITCHING HOUR
field found it difficult to put into speech the severity
which he felt the situation demanded.
"You are trying to get away?" he began, inter
rogatively.
"This your note?" Hardmuth said, in reply, ex
tending Brookfield's letter.
"Yes."
Hardmuth glanced at the page. "You say you
will help me get out of the State?"
"I will."
"When?"
"Whenever you are ready."
"I'm ready now."
"Then I'll help you now."
"Now?" Ellinger cried out, in astonishment.
"Yes."
" Doesn't that render you liable in some way, Jack,
to the law?" Helen said, anxiously.
"Yes; but I've been liable to the law in some way
for the last twenty years." Brookfield turned to
Clay. " You go down and tell the chauffeur to leave
the machine and walk home; I'm going to run it
myself, and I'll turn it in."
"Yes, sir." Clay left the room.
" You're going to run it yourself ?" Hardmuth asked,
with quick suspicion.
"Yes."
"Where to?"
"Across the river, if that's agreeable to you or
any place you name."
"Anybody waiting for you across the river?"
"No."
245
THE WITCHING HOUR
Again Hardmuth extended Brookfield's letter. " Is
this all on the level?"
"Completely."
"Why, I believe you mean that," Ellinger said, in
perplexity to Jack.
"I do."
"But I've got something to say, haven't I?"
"I hope not." Brookfield's answer was full of
authority.
"Well, if you're in earnest, of course," Lew apolo
gized; "but I don't see your game."
"I'm not fully convinced of Mr. Hardmuth's guilt."
"Why, he's runnin' away!"
"I know what a case they would make against
me," Hardmuth blustered; "but I'm not guilty in
any degree."
"Frank," Brookfield sternly interrupted, "I want
to do this thing for you; don't make it too difficult
by any lying. When I said I wasn't fully convinced
of your guilt, my reservation was one you wouldn't
understand." He crossed to the mantel and pushed
the electric button. Clay had entered the room while
he was speaking, and stood respectfully waiting to
report. Brookfield now inquired of the boy:
"Is he gone?"
"Yes."
"My coat and goggles?"
"Below in the reception-room," Clay said.
"Thank you. I wish now you would go to Viola
and her mother, and keep them wherever they are."
"All right, sir." Clay left the room; Brookfield
turned to Hardmuth.
246
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Hungry?"
"No, thank you."
"Got money?"
"Yes."
The darky boy came in answer to the bell. "Jo,
take Mr. Hardmuth below and lend him one of the
fur coats." And then to Hardmuth, "I'll join you
immediately."
Hardmuth followed the boy from the room.
Again left alone with Ellinger and Helen, Brook-
field turned to Lew and said :
"Lew, I called that ace of hearts, didn't I?"
"And the three queens," Lew answered, with rem
iniscent regret.
"Because the three queens and the ace were in
your mind."
"I don't see any other explanation."
"But suppose instead of the cards there had been
in your mind a well-developed plan of assassination
the picture of a murder "
"Did you drop to him that way?"
' ' No ; Raynor told me all I know of Hardmuth. But
here's the very hell of it." It was evident to Helen
that Brookfield's mental agony was unfeigned. "Long
before Scovil was killed I thought he deserved killing,
and I thought it could be done just as it was done."
"Jack!" Helen exclaimed, in a whisper.
"I never breathed a word of it to a living soul,
but Hardmuth planned it exactly as I dreamed it,
and, by God, a guilty thought is almost as criminal
as a guilty deed! I've always had a considerable in
fluence over that poor devil that's running away to-
247
THE WITCHING HOUR
night, and I'm not sure that before the Judge of
both of us the guilt isn't mostly mine."
In her wish to diminish Brookfield's mental suffer
ing, Helen sympathetically took his hand. "That's
morbid, Jack, dear," she urged "perfectly morbid."
"I hope it is- we'll none of us ever know in this
life." He turned to Ellinger. "But we can all of
us"
"What?" asked Lew, as Brookfield paused.
"Live as if it were true." With an effort Brook-
field threw off the sombreness of his mood and pre
pared for action. "I'm going to help him over the
line. The roads are watched, but the police won't
suspect me, and they won't suspect Lew, and all the
less if there is a lady with us." He turned again
briskly to Ellinger. "Will you go?"
"The limit," the old sport answered, in character
istic phrase.
"Get a heavy coat from Jo."
"All right."
Brookfield was left alone with Helen. He turned
to where she was sitting at one end of the library-
table. The hour, the lighting of the room, their
relative positions recalled with photographic vivid
ness their conversation on the night of the opera, the
conversation in which he had received the first hint
of the power of which he had since become so respon
sibly conscious, and which had worked such regenera
tion in his life. He put one hand over her hand, rest
ing on the table as it had rested then.
"You know you said I used to be able to make you
write to me when I was a boy at college?"
248
THE WITCHING HOUR
"Yes."
"And you were a thousand miles away while this
fellow Hardmuth was just at my elbow half the
time."
Helen rose quickly and came to him close. "It
can't help you to brood over it, Jack."
He took both her hands in his, laying them upon
h ; .s breast in the protective and tender way that had
grown upon him.
"It can help me to know it and make what amends
I can. Will you go with me while I put this poor
devil over the line?"
"Yes, I'll go with you," she answered at once.
She turned and got from the sofa the great-coat that
Viola had worn.
Brookfield took it from her and held it, assisting
her to put it on. As he hooked the chain fastening
of the collar under her chin, he said:
"Helen, you stood by your boy in the fight for his
life."
"Didn't you?^
Brookfield looked pleadingly into the eyes of the
woman he loved. "Will you stand by me," he
asked, "while I make my fight?"
She answered, simply: "You've made your fight,
Jack and you've won."
THE END
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m Arkansas, where she learns the needs of the colored race
first hand and begins to lose her theories.
GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26th ST., NEW YORK
n fill
Date Due /\/\ (
NOV 27
1QR3
MOV 2 u ,
'o33'
MAR 9
1970
HUVi
i mf\
NOV 2
f QOO II
v IjQQ IH
Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137
HUI W58
