"No! Do you wish _you_ were?"
Stunned by this "facer," Reginald Van Slyke gasped and stared. That he,
a scion of the Philadelphia Van Slykes, in his own right worth two
hundred million dollars--dollars ground out of the Kensington
carpet-mill slaves by his grandfather--should be thus flouted and put
upon by the daughter of Flint, that parvenu, absolutely floored him. For
a moment he sat there speechless, unable even to reach for his drink;
but presently some coherence returned. He was about to utter what he
conceived to be a strong rejoinder, when the girl suddenly standing up,
turned her back upon him and ignored him as completely as she might have
ignored any of the menials of the club.

His irritated glance followed hers. There, far down the drive, just
rounding the long turn by the artificial lake, a big blue motor car was
speeding up the grade at a good clip. Van Slyke recognized it, and swore
below his breath.

"Wally, at last, damn him!" he muttered. "Just when I was beginning to
make headway with Kate!"

Vexed beyond endurance, he drummed on the cloth with angry fingers; but
Catherine was oblivious. Unmindful of the merry-makers at the other
tables, the girl waved her handkerchief at the swiftly-approaching
motor. Waldron, from the back seat, raised an answering hand--though
without enthusiasm. Above all things he hated demonstration, and the
girl's frank manner, free, unconventional and not yet broken to the
harness of Mrs. Grundy, never failed to irritate him.

"Very incorrect for people in our set," he often thought. "But for the
present I can do nothing. Once she is my wife, ah, then I shall find
means to curb her. For the present, however, I must let her have her
head."

Such was now his frame of mind as the long car slid under the
porte-cochere and came to a stand. He would have infinitely preferred
that the girl should wait his coming to her, on the piazza; but already
she had slung her bag of sticks over her strong shoulder, and was down
the steps to meet him. Her leave-taking of the incensed Van Slyke had
been the merest nod.

"You're late, Wally," said she, smiling with her usual good humor, which
had already quite dissipated her impatience. "Late, but I'll forgive
you, this time. I'm afraid we won't have time to do all eighteen holes
round. What kept you?"

"Business, business!" he answered, frowning. "Always the same old
grind, Kate. You women don't understand. I tell you, this slaving in
Wall Street isn't what it's cracked up to be. I couldn't get away till
11:30. Then, just had a quick bite of lunch, and broke every speed law
in New York getting here. Do you forgive me?"

He had descended from the car, in speaking. They shook hands, while the
chauffeur stood at attention and all the gossips on the piazza, scenting
the possibility of a disagreement, craned discreetly eager necks and
listened intently.

"Forgive you? Of course--this time, but never again," the girl laughed.
"Now, run along and get into your flannels. I'll meet you on the driving
green, in ten minutes. Not another second, mind, or--"

"I'll be on the dot," he answered. "Here, boy," beckoning a caddy, "take
Miss Flint's sticks. And have mine carried to the green. Look sharp,
now!"

Then, with a nod at the girl, he ran up the steps and vanished in the
club-house, bound for the locker-room.

Fifteen minutes the girl waited on the green, watching others drive off
from the little tees and inwardly chafing to be in action. Fifteen, and
then twenty, before Waldron finally appeared, immaculate in white,
bare-armed and with a loose, checked cap shading his close-set eyes. The
fact was, in addition to having changed his clothes, he had felt obliged
to linger in the bar for a little Scotch; and one drink had meant
another; and thus precious moments had sped.

But his smile was confident as he approached the green. Women, after
all, he reflected, were meant to be kept waiting. They never appreciated
a man who kept appointments exactly. Not less fatuous at heart, in
truth, was he, than the unfortunate Van Slyke. But his manner was
perfection as he saluted her and bade the caddy build their tees.

The girl, however, was now plainly vexed. Her mouth had drawn a trifle
tight and the tilt of her chin was determined. Her eyes were far from
soft, as she surveyed this delinquent fiance.

"I don't like you a bit, today, Wally," said she, as he deliberated
over the club-bag, choosing a driver. "This makes twice you've kept me
waiting. I warn you don't let it happen again!"

Under the seeming banter of her tone lurked real resentment. But he,
with a smile--partly due to a finger too much Scotch--only answered, in
a low tone:

"You're adorable, today, Kate! The combination of fresh air and
annoyance has painted the most wonderful roses on your cheeks!"

She shrugged her shoulders with a little motion she had inherited from
French ancestry, stooped, set her golf ball on the little mound of sand,
exactly to suit her, and raised her driver on high.

"Nine holes," said she, "and I'm going to beat you, today!"

He frowned a little at the spirit of the threat, for any self-assertion
in a woman crossed his grain; but soon forgot his pique in admiration of
the drive.

Swishing, her club flashed down in a quick circle. _Crack_! It struck
the gutta-percha squarely. The little white sphere zipped away like a
rocket, rose in a far trajectory, up, up, toward the water-hazard at the
foot of the grassy slope, then down in a long curve.

Even while the girl's cry of "Fore!" was echoing across the green, the
ball struck earth, ricochetted and sped on, away, across the turf, till
it came to rest not twenty yards from the putting green of the first
hole.

"Wheeoo!" whistled Waldron. "Some drive. I guess you're going to make
good your threat, today, Kate of my heart!"

The smile she flashed at him showed that her resentment had, for the
moment, been forgotten.

"Come on, Wally, now let's see what _you_ can do," said she, starting
off down the slope, while her meek caddy tagged at a respectful
distance.

Waldron, thus adjured, teed up and swung at the ball. But the Scotch had
by no means steadied his aim. He foozled badly and broke his pet driver,
into the bargain. The steel head of it flew farther even than the ball,
which moved hardly ten yards.

"Damn!" he muttered, under his breath, choosing another stick and
glancing with real irritation at Catherine's lithe, splendidly poised
figure already some distance down the slope.

His second stroke was more successful, nearly equalling hers. But her
advantage, thus early won, was not destined to be lost again. And as the
game proceeded, Waldron's temper grew steadily worse and worse.

Thus began, for these two people, an hour destined to be fraught with
such pregnant developments--an hour which, in its own way, vitally bore
on the great loom now weaving warp and woof of world events.




CHAPTER XI.

THE END OF TWO GAMES.


Trivial events sometimes precipitate catastrophies. It has been said
that had James MacDonald not left the farm gate open, at Hugomont,
Waterloo might have ended otherwise. So now, the rupture between
Catherine Flint and Maxim Waldron was precipitated by a single unguarded
oath.

It was at the ninth hole, down back of the Terrace Woods bunker.
Waldron, heated by exercise and the whiskey he had drunk, had already
dismissed the caddies and had undertaken to carry the clubs, himself,
hoping--man-fashion--to steal a kiss or two from Catherine, along the
edge of the close-growing oaks and maples. But all his plans went agley,
for Catherine really made good and beat him, there, by half a dozen
strokes; and as her little sphere, deftly driven by the putting-iron
gripped in her brown, firm hands, rolled precisely over the cropped turf
and fell into the tinned hole, the man ejaculated a perfectly audible
"_Hell!_"

She stood erect and faced him, with a singular expression in those level
gray eyes--eyes the look of which could allure or wither, could entice
or command.

"Wally," said she, "did you swear?"

"I--er--why, yes," he stammered, taken aback and realizing, despite his
chagrin, how very poor and unsportsmanlike a figure he was cutting.

"I don't like it," she returned. "Not a little bit, Wally. It isn't
game, and it isn't manly. You must respect me, now and always. I can't
have profanity, and I won't."

He essayed lame apologies, but a sudden, hot anger seemed to have
possessed him, in presence of this free, independent, exacting
woman--this woman who, worst of all, had just beaten him at the game of
all games he prided himself on playing well. And despite his every
effort, she saw through the veil of sheer, perfunctory courtesy; and
seeing, flushed with indignation.

"Wally," she said in a low, quiet tone, fixing a singular gaze upon him,
"Wally, I don't know what to make of you lately. The other night at Idle
Hour, you hardly looked at me. You and father spent the whole evening
discussing some business or other--"

"Most important business, my dear girl, I do assure you," protested
Waldron, trying to steady his voice. "Most vitally--"

"No matter about that," she interposed. "It could have been abridged, a
trifle. I barely got six words out of you, that evening; and let me tell
you, Wally, a woman never forgets neglect. She may forgive it; but
forget it, never!"

"Oh, well, if you put it that way--" he began, but checked himself in
time to suppress the cutting rejoinder he had at his tongue's end.

"I do, and it's vital, Wally," she answered. "It's all part and parcel
of some singular kind of change that's been coming over you, lately,
like a blight. You haven't been yourself, at all, these few days past.
Something or other, I don't know what, has been coming between us.
You've got something else on your mind, beside me--something bigger and
more important to you than I am--and--and--"

He pulled out his gold cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steady
his nerve, and faced her with a smile--the worst tactic he could
possibly have chosen in dealing with this woman. Supremely successful in
handling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and now
that lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by moment
nearer the edge of catastrophe.

"I don't like it at all, Waldron," she resumed, again. "You were late,
the other night, in taking me to the Flower Show. You were late, today,
for our appointment here; and the ten minutes I gave you to get ready
in, stretched out to twenty before you--"

He interrupted her with a gesture of uncontrollable vexation.

"Really, my dear Kate," he exclaimed, "if you--er--insist on holding me
to account for every moment--"

"You've been drinking, too, a little," she kept on. "And you know I
detest it! And just now, when I beat you in a square game, you so far
forgot yourself as to swear. Now, Waldron--"

"Oh, puritanical, eh?" he sneered, ignoring the danger signals in her
eyes. Even yet there might have been some chance of avoiding shipwreck,
had he heeded those twin beacons, humbled himself, made amends by due
apology and promised reformation. For though Catherine never had truly
loved this man, some years older than herself and of radically different
character, still she liked and respected him, and found him--by his very
force and dominance--far more to her taste than the insipid hangers-on,
sons of fortune or fortune-hunters, who, like the sap-brained Van
Slyke, made up so great a part of her "set."

So, all might yet have been amended; but this was not to be. Never yet
had "Tiger" Waldron bowed the neck to living man or woman. Dominance was
his whole scheme of life. Though he might purr, politely enough, so long
as his fur was smoothed the right way, a single backward stroke set his
fangs gleaming and unsheathed every sabre-like claw. And now this woman,
his fiancee though she was, her beauty dear to him and her charm most
fascinating, her fortune much desired and most of all, an alliance with
her father--now this woman, despite all these considerations, had with a
few incisive words ruffled his temper beyond endurance.

So great was his agitation that, despite his strongest instinct of
saving, he flung away the scarcely-tasted cigar.

"Kate," he exclaimed, his very tongue thick with the rage he could not
quell, "Kate, I can't stand this! You're going too far. What do you know
of men's work and men's affairs? Who are you, to judge of their times of
coming and going, their obligations, their habits and man of life? What
do _you_ understand--?"

"It's obvious," she replied with glacial coldness, "that I don't
understand _you_, and never have. I have been living in a dream, Wally;
seeing you through the glass of illusion; not reality. After all, you're
like all men--just the same, no different. Idealism, self-sacrifice, con
true nobility of character, where are these, in you? What is there but
the same old selfishness, the same innate masculine conceit and--"

"No more of this, Kate!" cried the financier, paling a little. "No more!
I can't have it! I won't--it's impossible! You--you don't understand, I
tell you. In your narrow, untrained, woman's way, you try to set up
standards for me; try to judge me, and dictate to me. Some old
puritanical streak in you is cropping out, some blue-law atavism, some I
know not what, that rebels against my taking a drink--like every other
man. That cries out against my letting slip a harmless oath--again, like
every other man that lives and breathes. Every man, that is, who _is_ a
man, a real man, not a dummy! If you've been mistaken in me, how much
more have I, in you! And so--"

"And so," she took the very words from his pale lips, "we've both been
mistaken, that's all. No, no," she forbade him with raised hand, as he
would have interrupted with protests. "No, you needn't try to convince
me otherwise, now. A thousand volumes of speeches, after this, couldn't
do it. An hour's insight into the true depths of a man's character--yes,
even a moment's--perfectly suffices to show the truth. You've just drawn
the veil aside, Wally, for me, and let me look at the true picture. All
that I've known and thought of you, so far, has been sham and illusion.
Now, I _know_ you!"

"You--you don't, Catherine!" he exclaimed, half in anger, half
contrition, terrified at last by the imminent break between them, by the
thought of losing this rich flower from the garden of womanhood, this
splendid financial and social prize. "I--I've done wrong, Kate. I admit
it. But, truly--"

"No more," said she, and in her voice sounded a command he knew, at
last, was quite inexorable. "I'm not like other women of our set,
perhaps. I can't be bought and sold, Wally, with money and position. I
can't marry a man, and have to live with him, if he shows himself
petty, or small, or narrow in any way. I must be free, free as air, as
long as I live. Even in marriage, I must be free. Freedom can only come
with the union of two souls that understand and help and inspire each
other. Anything else is slavery--and worse!"

She shuddered, and for a moment turned half away from him, as, now
contrite enough for the minute, he stood there looking at her with dazed
eyes. For a second the idea came to him that he must take her in his
arms, there in the edge of the woods, burn kisses on her ripe mouth, win
her back to him by force, as he had won all life's battles. He would
not, could not, let this prize escape him now. A wave of desire surged
through his being. He took a step toward her, his trembling arms open to
seize her lithe, seductive body. But she, retreating, held him away with
repellant palms.

"No, no, no!" she cried. "Not now--never that, any more! I must be free,
Wally--free as air!"

She raised her face toward the vast reaches of the sky, breathed deep
and for a moment closed her eyes, as though bathing her very soul in the
sweet freedom of the out-of-doors.

"Free as air!" she whispered. "Let me go!"

He started violently. Her simile had struck him like a lash.

"Free--as what?" he exclaimed hoarsely. "As _air_? But--but there's no
such freedom, I tell you! Air isn't free any more--or won't be, soon! It
will be everything, anything but free, before another year is gone! Free
as air? You--you don't understand! Your father and I--we shall soon own
the air. Free as air? Yes, if you like! For that--that means you, too,
must belong to me!"

Again he sought to take her, to hold her and overmaster her. But she,
now wide-eyed with a kind of sudden terror at this latest outbreak, this
seeming madness on his part, which she could nowise fathom or
comprehend, retreated ever more and more, away from him.

Then suddenly with a quick effort, she stripped off the splendid,
blazing diamond from her finger, and held it out to him.

"Wally," said she, calm now and quite herself again, "Wally, let's be
friends. Just that and nothing more. Dear, good, companionable friends,
as we used to be, long years ago, before this madness seized us--this
chimera of--of love!"

As a bull charging, is struck to the heart by the sword of the matador,
and stops in his tracks, motionless and dazed before he falls, so
"Tiger" Waldron stopped, wholly stunned by this abrupt and crushing
denouement.

For a moment, man and woman faced each other. Not a word was spoken.
Catherine had no word to say; and Waldron, though his lips worked, could
bring none to utterance. Then their eyes met; and his lowered.

"Good-bye," said she quietly. "Good-bye forever, as my betrothed. When
we meet again, Wally, it will be as friends, and nothing more. And now,
let me go. Don't come with me. I prefer to be alone. I'd rather walk, a
bit, and think--and then go back quietly to the club-house, and so home,
in my car. Don't follow me. Here--take this, and--good-bye."

Mechanically he accepted the gleaming jewel. Mechanically, like a man
without sense or reason, he watched her walk away from him, upright and
strong and lithe, voluptuous and desirable in every motion of that
splendid body, now lost to him forever. Then all at once, entering a
woodland path that led by a short cut back to the club-house, she
vanished from his sight.

Vanished, without having even so much as turned to look at him again, or
wave that firm brown hand.

Then, seeming to waken from his daze, "Tiger" laughed, a terrible and
cruel laugh; and then he flung a frightful blasphemy upon the still June
air; and then he dashed the wondrous diamond to earth, and stamped and
dug it with a perfect frenzy of rage into the soft mold.

And, last of all, with lowered head and lips that moved in fearful
curses, he crashed away into the woods, away from the path where the
girl was, away from the club-house, away, away, thirsting for solitude
and time to quell his passion, salve his wounded pride and ponder
measures of terrible revenge.

The diamond ring, crushed into the earth, and the golf clubs, lying
where they had fallen from the disputants' hands, now remained there as
melancholy reminders of the double game--love and golf--which had so
suddenly ended in disaster.




CHAPTER XII.

ON THE GREAT HIGHWAY.


As violently rent from his job as Maxim Waldron had been torn from his
alliance with Catherine, Gabriel Armstrong met the sudden change in his
affairs with far more equanimity than the financier could muster. Once
the young electrician's first anger had subsided--and he had pretty well
mastered it before he had reached the Oakwood Heights station--he began
philosophically to turn the situation in his mind, and to rough out his
plans for the future.

"Things might be worse, all round," he reflected, as he strode along at
a smart pace. "During the seven months I've been working for these
pirates, I've managed to pay off the debt I got into at the time of the
big E. W. strike, and I've got eighteen dollars or a little more in
my pocket. My clothes will do a while longer. Even though Flint
blacklists me all over the country, as he probably will, I can duck into
some job or other, somewhere. And most important of all, I know what's
due to happen in America--I've seen that note-book! Let them do what
they will, they can't take _that_ knowledge away from me!"

The outlook, on the whole, was cheering. Gabriel broke into a whistle,
as he swung along the highway, and slashed cheerfully with his heavy
stick at the dusty bushes by the roadside. A vigorous, pleasing figure
of a man he made, striding onward in his blue flannel shirt and
corduroys, stout boots making light of distance, somewhat rebellious
black hair clustering under his cap, blue eyes clear and steady as the
sunlight itself. There must have been a drop of Irish blood somewhere or
other in his veins, to have given him that ruddy cheek, those eyes, that
hair, that quick enthusiasm and that swiftness to anger--then, by
reaction, that quick buoyancy which so soon banished everything but
courageous optimism from his hot heart.

Thus the man walked, all his few worldly belongings--most precious among
them his union card and his red Socialist card--packed in the knapsack
strapped to his broad shoulders. And as he walked, he formulated his
plans.

"Niagara for mine," he decided. "It's there these hellions mean to start
their devilish work of enslaving the whole world. It's there I want to
be, and must be, to follow the infernal job from the beginning and to
nail it, when the right time comes. I'll put in a day or two with my old
friend, Sam Underwood, up in the Bronx, and maybe tell him what's doing
and frame out the line of action with him. But after that, I strike for
Niagara--yes, and on foot!"

This decision came to him as strongly desirable. Not for some time, he
knew, could the actual work of building the Air Trust plant be started
at Niagara. Meanwhile, he wanted to keep out of sight, as much as
possible. He wanted, also to save every cent. Again, his usual mode of
travel had always been either to ride the rods or "hike" it on shanks'
mare. Bitterly opposed to swelling the railways' revenues by even a
penny, Armstrong in the past few years of his life had done some
thousands of miles, afoot, all over the country. His best means of
Socialist propaganda, he had found, was in just such meanderings along
the highways and hedges of existence--a casual job, here or there, for a
day, a week, a month--then, quick friendships; a little talk; a few
leaflets handed to the intelligent, if he could find any. He had laced
the continent with such peregrinations, always sowing the seed of
revolution wherever he had passed; getting in touch with the Movement
all over the republic; keeping his finger on the pulse of ever-growing,
always-strengthening Socialism.

Such had his habits long been. And now, once more adrift and jobless,
but with the most tremendous secret of the ages in his possession, he
naturally turned to the comfort and the calming influence of the broad
highway, in his long journey towards the place where he was to meet, in
desperate opposition, the machinations of the Air Trust magnates.

"It's the only way for me," he decided, as he turned into the road
leading toward Saint George and the Manhattan Ferry. "Flint and Herzog
will be sure to put Slade and the Cosmos people after me. Blacklisting
will be the least of what they'll try to do. They'll use slugging
tactics, sure, if they get a chance, or railroad me to some Pen or
other, if possible. My one best bet is to keep out of their way; and I
figure I'm ten times safer on the open road, with a few dollars to stave
off a vagrancy charge, and with two good fists and this stick to keep
'em at a distance, than I would be on the railroads or in cheap dumps
along the way.

"The last place they'll ever think of looking for me will be the big
outdoors. _Their_ idea of hunting for a workman is to dragnet the back
rooms of saloons--especially if they're after a Socialist. That's the
limit of their intelligence, to connect Socialism and beer. I'll beat
'em; I'll hike--and it's a hundred to one I land in Niagara with more
cash than when I started, with better health, more knowledge, and the
freedom that, alone, can save the world now from the most damnable
slavery that ever threatened its existence!"

Thus reasoning, with perfect clarity and a long-headedness that proved
him a strategist at four-and-twenty, Gabriel Armstrong whistled a louder
note as he tramped away to northward, away from the hateful presence of
Herzog, away from the wage-slavery of the Oakwood Heights plant,
away--with that precious secret in his brain--toward the far scene of
destined warfare, where stranger things were to ensue than even he could
possibly conceive.

Saturday morning found him, his visit with Underwood at an end, already
twenty miles or more from the Bronx River, marching along through
Haverstraw, up the magnificent road that fringes the Hudson--now hidden
from the mighty river behind a forest-screen, now curving on bold
abutments right above the sun-kissed expanses of Haverstraw Bay, here
more than two miles from wooded shore to shore.

At eleven, he halted at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got
a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch
he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful
dinner, and--after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, to
whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack--said
good-bye to all hands and once more set his face northward for the long
hike through much wilder country, to West Point, where he hoped to pass
the night.

Thus we must leave him, for a while. For now the thread of our
narration, like the silken cord in the Labyrinth of Crete, leads us back
to the Country Club at Longmeadow, the scene, that very afternoon, of
the sudden and violent rupture between the financier and Catherine
Flint.

Catherine, her first indignation somewhat abated, and now vastly
relieved at the realization that she indeed was free from her loveless
and long-since irksome alliance with Waldron, calmly enough returned to
the club-house. Head well up, and eyes defiant, she walked up the broad
steps and into the office. Little cared she whether the piazza
gossips--The Hammer and Anvil Club, in local slang--divined the quarrel
or not. The girl felt herself immeasurably indifferent to such
pettinesses as prying small talk and innuendo. Let people know, or not,
as might be, she cared not a whit. Her business was her own. No wagging
of tongues could one hair's breadth disturb that splendid calm of hers.

The clerk, behind the desk, smiled and nodded at her approach.

"Please have my car brought round to the porte-cochere, at once?" she
asked. "And tell Herrick to be sure there's plenty of gas for a long
run. I'm going through to New York."

"So soon?" queried the clerk. "I'm sure your father will be
disappointed, Miss Flint. He's just wired that he's coming out tomorrow,
to spend Sunday here. He particularly asks to have you remain. See
here?"

He handed her a telegram. She glanced it over, then crumpled it and
tossed it into the office fire-place.

"I'm sorry," she answered. "But I can't stay. I must get back, to-night.
I'll telegraph father not to come. A blank, please?"

The clerk handed her one. She pondered a second, then wrote:

Dear Father: A change of plans makes me return home at once.
Please wait and see me there. I've something important to talk over
with you.

Affectionately,

Kate.

Ordinarily people try to squeeze their message to ten words, and count
and prune and count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram
had never contained any space limit. It meant less to her than a
post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant.
No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy--she rarely,
for instance, paid more than a hundred dollars for a morning gown, or
more than a thousand for a ball-dress. It was simply that the idea of
counting words had never yet occurred to her. And so now, she
complacently handed this verbose message to the clerk, who--thoroughly
well-trained--understood it was to be charged on her father's perfectly
staggering monthly bill.

"Very well, Miss Flint," said he. "I'll send this at once. And your car
will be ready for you in ten minutes--or five, if you like?"

"Ten will do, thank you," she answered. Then she crossed to the
elevator and went up to her own suite of rooms on the second floor, for
her motor-coat and veils.

"Free, thank heaven!" she breathed, with infinite relief, as she stood
before the tall mirror, adjusting these for the long trip. "Free from
that man forever. What a narrow escape! If things hadn't happened just
as they did, and if I hadn't had that precious insight into Wally's
character--good Lord!--catastrophe! Oh, I haven't been so happy since
I--since--why, I've _never_ been so happy in all my life!

"Wally, dear boy," she added, turning toward the window as though
apostrophizing him in reality, "now we can be good friends. Now all the
sham and pretense are at an end, forever. As a friend, you may be
splendid. As a husband--oh, impossible!"

Lighter of heart than she had been for years, was she, with the added
zest of the long spin through the beauty of the June country before
her--down among the hills and cliffs, among the forests and broad
valleys--down to New York again, back to the father and the home she
loved better than all else in the world.

In this happy frame of mind she presently entered the low-hung,
swift-motored car, settled herself on the luxurious cushions and said
"Home, at once!" to Herrick.

He nodded, but did not speak. He felt, in truth, somewhat incapable of
quite incoherent speech. Not having expected any service till next day,
he had foregathered with others of his ilk in the servants' bar,
below-stairs, and had with wassail and good cheer very effectively put
himself out of commission.

But, somewhat sobered by this quick summons, he had managed to pull
together. Now, drunk though he was, he sat there at the wheel, steady
enough--so long as he held on to it--and only by the redness of his face
and a certain glassy look in his eye, betrayed the fact of his
intoxication. The girl, busy with her farewells as the car drew up for
her, had not observed him. At the last moment Van Slyke waved a foppish
hand at her, and smirked adieux. She acknowledged his good-bye with a
smile, so happy was she at the outcome of her golf-game; then cast a
quick glance up at the club windows, fearing to see the harsh face of
Wally peeping down at her in anger.

But he was nowhere to be seen; and now, with a sudden acceleration of
the powerful six-cylinder engine, the big gray car moved smoothly
forward. Growling in its might, it swung in a wide circle round the
sweep of the drive, gathered speed and shot away down the grade toward
the stone gates of the entrance, a quarter mile distant.

Presently it swerved through these, to southward. Club-house, waving
handkerchiefs and all vanished from Kate's view.

"Faster, Herrick," she commanded, leaning forward, "I must be home by
half past five."

Again he nodded, and notched spark and throttle down. The car, leaping
like a wild creature, began to hum at a swift clip along the smooth,
white road toward Newburgh on the Hudson.

Thirty miles an hour the speedometer showed, then thirty-five and forty.
Again the drunken chauffeur, still master of his machine despite the
poison pulsing in his dazed brain, snicked the little levers further
down. Forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, the figures on the dial showed.

Now the exhaust ripped in a crackling staccato, like a machine gun, as
the chauffeur threw out the muffler. Behind, a long trail of dust rose,
whirling in the air. Catherine, a sportswoman born, leaned back and
smiled with keen pleasure, while her yellow veil, whipping sharply on
the wind, let stray locks of that wonderful red-gold hair stream about
her flushed face.

Thus she sped homeward, driven at a mad race by a man whose every sense
was numbed and stultified by alcohol--homeward, along a road up which,
far, far away, another man, keen, sober and alert, was trudging with a
knapsack on his broad back, swinging a stick and whistling cheerily as
he went.

Fate, that strange moulder of human destinies, what had it in store for
these two, this woman and this man? This daughter of a billionaire, and
this young proletarian?

Who could foresee, or, foreseeing, could believe what even now stood
written on the Book of Destiny?




CHAPTER XIII.

CATASTROPHE!


For a time no danger seemed to threaten. Kate was not only fearless as a
passenger, but equally intrepid at the wheel. Many a time and oft she
had driven her father's highest-powered car at dizzying speeds along
worse roads than the one her machine was now following. Velocity was to
her a kind of stimulant, wonderfully pleasurable; and now, realizing
nothing of the truth that Herrick was badly the worse for liquor, she
leaned back in the tonneau, breathed the keen slashing air with delight,
and let her eyes wander over the swiftly-changing panorama of forest,
valley, lake and hill that, in ever new and more radiant beauty, sped
away, away, as the huge car leaped down the smooth and rushing road.

Dust and pebbles flew in the wake of the machine, as it gathered