I

Crouched over the great red fire of gum logs crackling half-way up the chimney, Henny was being very sulky with her guests. Robert Snow would have her in trouble yet over this business of Mr. Comyn, and so she had told him last night. "I said I wouldn't have you harm Comyn," she had told him. "Any more o't and I peaches on yer. So now yer knows." But Robert Snow had looked at her with his still eyes and his small crooked smile, and clinked a few gold pieces in his hand, and … well, an old woman has to live, and there was no money in the lot who came to the road-house now. Besides, it was her pride that she had never yet peached on a client.

A poor lot who patronized her now. Terrible, she thought them, unguessing that they thought her terrible, too. No more they came to Henny's, the lusty young stockmen and shearers and bullockies. They were all grown too proud. All over the colonies now many whom the system had set free were slowly making good, working out the taint, building up their triumphs out of their tragedies. Henny's patrons were the old lags in these days. Bleared grey-headed derelicts which the country had finally cast out. For years they and their kind had hampered her; but now, authors of her being although they were, she had her foot on them at last. They were the homeless ones, the irredeemables; tramping the Main Road, men and women together; lying together at night in such foul-smelling hovels as Henny's.

Huddled in the warmth, they mumbled their smutty stories in the half-forgotten slang of the prisons, or dozed about the fire in the harsh smoke of square-fig tobacco and the stale odour of dirty bodies and the sharp reek of overproof spirits. Henny regarded them sourly. No gentlemen come to buy a dog of a well-set-up stockman now. Only red nightcaps on grizzled hair; only old Stony's toothless mouth dropping; only Betty Harker's page 299battered and mincing face decked about with ragged feathers and scraps of torn ribbon.

The glory of her road-house was departed, she forlornly felt; and then heard at her door the step that was not the dragging step of discouraged age, heard a voice that was a gentleman's voice although it was not Snow's. Never did she want to see that Snow again, him that shot at Comyn who never did harm to no man. But when Brevis came lightly in, kicking damp fern mould from his riding-boots, nodding to one another, stretching his hands to the fire as he smiled his dark fine smile at Henny, she felt a sudden sickening of her whole body. Everyone knew young Mr. Keyes who did things with the law and was so clever he could have her into Port Arthur yet if he liked. And everyone knew that he had been hurt when Snow's Gang got the Comyn gold.

But as the one-time favourite of long-dead gallant gentlemen Henny met this gentleman bravely, croaking welcome under her moth-eaten bonnet.

"A stranger yer've been to one as allers wished yer well, Mr. Brevis, dear. Take a sip o' suthin' warm, honey. Ah, t'ain't much old Henny's got to offer yer now. All the gels is gone, huntin' suthin' better than these ole lags. But I got a drop 0' fine sperrit yet."

"That's good. Drinks all round, Henny." Brevis pulled up a stool and put his boot-soles to the fire. "So old Braxey's gone, Henny?"

"Ah. Unwoun' his sins, he did, till thar warn't none left. 'That's done at larst,' he said, an' went out like a cannle. The saints come fur him, I reckon. He were a good man."

"Just so. Do you know if he had any relatives, Henny? There's money waiting for them. Left by someone he once worked for."

The fish snapped exactly as Brevis had expected. Henny's rapacious eyes gleamed. "Well, my love, I wun't deceive yer. Ole Braxey he were my brother."

"Really? Now, that is going to save me much trouble. You won't object to coming down to Trienna court-house next Thursday, will you? A few formalities to be gone through before paying it over, you know."

She objected with terrified violence, and this he had also page 300expected. He pushed the logs with his toe, pretending to consider. "I might manage to arrange it, if … but they can't harm you, you know. They have already asked you about Snow's Gang, haven't they?"

"Hundreds of 'em. And I don't know nothin'. I swear I don't know nothin'," she repeated, thrusting the cranky bonnet back on her grizzled locks and staring at him.

"They were fools if they expected you to sell him … or anyone. Never sold a pal in your life, did you, Henny?"

"Never did, s'elp me Gord. Ah, I'd be a rich woman now if I had!"

"But surely they shared with you, didn't they?"

His innocence disarmed her. Besides, this was a life-grievance.

"Mighty poor pickin's I ever had from ary one of em, and so I tell yer, Mr. Keyes, sir. An' all that stuff Collins had hid in the caves back there an' went off to be hung never tellin' me, an' though I've looked an' looked …" Caution returned suddenly, although Brevis was merely poking idly at the fire with a stick. "I never been in no caves," she muttered. "I was jest talkin'."

"Well, that was too bad of them. But if you won't come to the court-house I don't know what I can do to make you more comfortable." He flashed a sudden smile at her. "I'd like to get you that money of Braxey's, too. Since he's gone, it is certainly yours as I see it."

She twisted her withered hands together; lifted one to pluck nervously at her withered throat.

"I could do w'it. I could do wi't fine. I'm near clemmed, times. But I ain't never sold a pal yet. Dun't ask me to do it, Mr. Keyes, sir, fur I'm almighty damned if I ever will."

Her bleared old eyes had another look now. Loyalty. Honour among thieves. Pride…. What a hound I am, thought Brevis, proceeding to tangle her dazed brain in sophistries.

"Don't we all know that? There was Mr. Sorley's reward, and a dozen behind that; and you'd sooner starve than touch them. A great record, Henny. I doubt if there's another in the country one could say it of."

After so many years of being cursed by those she served, Henny was not proof against this. She glanced round hastily, but all her page 301ancient patrons were drowsed into slumber over the drink and the fire. Then in a fervent patter larded with prison slang she let Brevis into the secrets of an amazing life, brutal, terrible, and yet strangely streaked with light, for through it all ran her Thief's Litany: But I ain't never sold a pal yet. No, quite clearly she never had, although they had battened on her, bullied her, neglected her, these lawless ruffians who had been content to leave their lives in her hand. No, not even now, although she cursed Snow for shooting Mab Comyn, although it had come nearly to a choice between betraying him and going "on the road." "I dun't wan' to die on the road, Mr. Brevis. Not unner a haystack, I dun't. But the stockin's main empty these days."

A gallant old sinner, Henny; but Brevis was here with his mother-wit and his youthful cruelty to make her false to her creed at the last. He led up to it by skilful sympathies, careless questions. Then: "Well, I try to get Braxey's money for you, Henny. But it will take time and expense. I'd like you just to tell me where those caves are so that we might discover Collins's cache. You know he stole valuable jewels and things from most of the big houses."

"I been up an' looked dozens o' nights, Mr. Brevis, but I never carn't find nothin'."

"Good Lord! They must be quite close," thought Brevis. "Well, suppose we go up and have a look to-night, Henny."

"No, no. Not to-night. To-morrer … or maybe next night."

"Snow's there," thought Brevis. "Why not to-night, Henny? It only takes about half an hour, you know."

"Na, na. Near an hour wi' these ole legs. The stones in the watercourse is main bad, though the hosses go up a'reet. An' there's that bog at the top where the spring makes 'i the ferns, an' then down t'rough the water inside …" She stopped, her face suddenly gone wild. "I've told yer! Dom yer bloody eyes; I've told yer!"

"Well," he said easily, "and what if you have? Collins don't want his cache any more, and if you and I find anything I'll see that you get something out of it. I'll be back on Friday night if you can take me then. Will that be all right?"

He saw her consider, her old jaws munching together, her page 302rheumy eyes restless…. She's wondering if she can get Snow away in time, the old bitch, he thought…. Then suddenly she laid her dirty crooked hand upon his knee.

"Mr. Keyes, sir, what I jes' tole yer … It ain't sellin' nobody, are it, seein' as I dun't take the reward?"

Her muddled old brain! Not clearly knowing what it was saying, but clinging still to one shred of honour! Brevis reassured her; but his face was burning and he could not look at her eyes. He had tricked her as he had tricked so many people, but he could not trick himself. This was one of the victories of which he would never be proud. He promised to be back on Friday night, and rode away through the dark twisting bush tracks to Trienna. He knew the place now. They would all know it. They had all seen the stream that ran back from the bog into the hill. But it was a desperate man who first thought of riding down that dark watery gut. Bushmen might have done it, but it would be to their interest to keep quiet in case they some day needed the shelter themselves. Police and military had neither the soul nor the skill of bushmen.

By George, it's not a place to storm, he thought, putting his horse to a gallop along the Main Road. They could pick us off one by one. But because Henny would certainly go dragging her faithful old weary body up there at once, Brevis must have the place surrounded if possible within the hour…. I wonder what Snow will do to Henny. Probably shoot her, he thought, and pulled up before the red blank face of Trienna Barracks.

II

Now it was past midday, and they had been galloping more or less since sun-up; for a stern chase is a long one and Snow's Gang knew every short cut through the timber, every wild way round the crumbling mountainside. Mab Comyn, his arm in a sling, led the scattering bunch of about fifty riders as he had led ever since a tracker scouting round the mouth of the caves in the uncertain moonlight reported that the bush-rangers had certainly gone.

More time was lost in finding the trail. But the country was awake everywhere: boys running; men galloping with informa-page 303tion like exultant fox-hunters near the kill. "Snow's Gang! "they shouted to one another. "Snow's Gang! "To small freckled boys Snow was nearly tradition. He had come in with their babyhood. To station-owners he was a memory of peculiar indignity. One by one he had caught most of them in their time. To all these riding men—Beverleys, Sorleys, Comyns, the sons of the blacksmith Fremp, men from the tanneries, little run-holders—Snow the bush-ranger meant something, but to Mab he meant most of all.

Never in all his tempestous life, Mab felt, had he burned so for revenge. The fellow would have rotted in Port Arthur if Mab hadn't helped him out. To be sure, he had put him there in the first place, but Snow deserved something. He must know he had deserved something, and with proper behaviour he would soon have been out again.

By God! he thought, easing Vanity's gallant daughter up a long stony hill behind Latterdale, it's enough to make a man never show mercy to anyone.

From the hilltop his eyes, so well used to distance, saw through the shimmer of heat a dark speck on the hill beyond. Another; a third; and all moving. Standing in the saddle, he shouted back to those behind: "There they are! There they are! On the Breakneck Ridge!"

He shook the reins and went pelting down the shingle slope. And after him, sliding, jumping, scattering the small stones like hail followed the hunt. Only picked men left in it now, after these twenty miles of roads and gullies and hills, picking up the trail and losing it, scouting into scrub and drawing it blind. But they would be fewer yet by the time this tearing gallop came to its end in a straight fight to the death. "For he'll never be taken alive," said Bob Beverley, his big yellow beard blowing over his shoulders, his stallion snorting, sliding down the steep way on its broad haunches. He looked round on this splendid avalanche of prime horse-flesh, man-flesh with a twinge of unease…. Some will probably go to Kingdom Come before we're through with this, he thought, steadying at the bottom among the golden bracken, racing away after Mab.

Under the hoofs the bracken crackled like fire. Tall red heaths bent their belled heads and were trampled out in the mud of a page 304creek. At a stout deadwood fence they raised a boomah kangaroo and for a mile or so the great frightened beast ran with them, taking fifteen-foot leaps from off his mighty tail. Full speed they were racing now; dodging under low branches in the open bush, rattling down hills under cutty-grass clumps and wombat-holes and leaping stones; flying the post-and-rails of boundary fences with a clatter; scrambling over huge long-dead logs that trapped a careless hoof in its rotten core. The thunder of the hoofs was music to these born riders; the flinty fire struck between iron and stone; the smell of the sweating horses, the white foam flung from the bits—all was good to them.

The passion of the hunt had taken the horses. Strong upstanding brutes of the hardy colonial breed, like cats they fought their way up steep faces of water-worn roots and jutting stones, and still had a gallop left down the last rough stony gully. Now the bush-rangers were close ahead, striving to reach the shelter of honeysuckle and tea-tree thickets beyond. The young constable, his broad snub-nosed face running with blood from a bramble scratch, was shouting to them to surrender. "Surrender! In the Queen's name." They answered with a volley that went wide, and then they were into the thicket, leaving their foundered horses outside.

Brevis, again with that sinking at the pit of his stomach, pulled on the reins. Nasty work it was going to be in there. He saw Mab Comyn thunder past, crouched low, his hat lost, his dark ruddy face intent, and shuddered as though some terrible force had gone by. Mab crashed in among the honeysuckles with their dried brush fingers, their squat monkeyish shapes, and the bullets snickered all round him and the air was full of red flashes. He heard the troopers firing just behind, heard little Mark Sorley cry out. And then he was hand to hand with one bearded ruffian who dragged him out of the saddle so they both rolled to the ground. As he fell he saw Snow backed up against the blue-gum bole, and sight of that fierce, desperate figure set him shouting: "Don't kill him! For God's sake don't kill him!"

Brevis, frankly afraid and sick, waited for them to come out. After the crashing of scrub, the hoarse shouting of men, the barking of the revolvers, there was a short horrible silence. Then they page 305came; the troopers hauling two handcuffed exhausted men and Mab with Bob Beverley carrying the third. Mab's face was dead-white as Brevis ran up, but the low shafts of the setting sun turned the man they carried blood-red. Or perhaps it was really blood…. Mark Sorley came whimpering and limping. "Wrenched my knee on a branch," he said. "How the deuce I'll ride home … Yes; it's Snow. He's near gone, if not quite," he said.

They laid Snow down by a little creek that lilted grey and clear over the stones. It was all shadows here, and the cool scent of water rising above the stench of blood and heated men. Mab put his folded coat under the still head and brought water in somebody's hat. His face was wild. "God! He can't go like this! "he cried. "Make him speak, somebody! "Brevis, dabbing water on Snow's forehead, thought: Not he. His big coup hasn't come off. He wasn't born to kill Mab, but he still can torment him, and he will.

Henry Sorley, pinched and grey with fatigue, hovered before Snow's opening eyes. Henry asked in his gentle, anxious way, "Is there anything we can do for you, my friend?"

"Yes," said Snow, without emphasis. "Go to hell."

Mab brought his face close. "Snow, where did you hide that gold? You can't take it with you. Be decent, man."

"I might have been decent … long ago." Snow paused between the words. He sighed feebly, then opened his eyes full on Mab and his faint crooked smile came back. "What is it you want of me, Mr. Comyn?"

"Where's that gold you stole from me?"

"Where are all those years you stole from me at Port Arthur? Answer that!"

"It was your own doing. If you'd behaved——"

"If I hadn't been human like other men, you mean," His voice was suddenly stronger, and the rest stood back a little. Quite clearly and very surprisingly this was a personal affair between the two. Brevis thought: Gentleman ranker. Oxford or Cambridge? He'll never forgive Mab.

A company of minahs chattered on a near-by tree. A magpie began his evening call. Scent of the water and of some pungent page 306shrub in the bush strengthened. The sunset stood above the bare hill like fire. Snow moved his head a little. The change was already on his face, making it gaunter and in some strange hard way beautiful. His voice was sharp:

"What did you expect me to do? Cringe and whine to you and your sort? Run with the women of the road? Be the animal your system tried to make of me? You're a damned proud man, Mab Comyn, and I'd have killed you if I could. But luck … was against me … always was."

"Give him brandy," said Bob Beverley, offering a flask. But Snow shut his teeth against it.

"No. I've had enough of you all. I'm going. If there's a God, He will understand … better than you did."

"The gold! The gold! For God's sake, man, where is it?"

Snow's eyes opened again. His crooked smile flickered. "Would you like to know, Mab Comyn?" His voice faded on the last word; sighed. His eyes closed.

III

Since Jenny would not marry and have babies—which of course was the first duty of woman—Susan put her to teaching those already arrived, and toiled up to the school-room each day to see how she did. On the day of the man-hunt she found brightness from a big log fire, the twins' yellow heads, a red tablecloth, russet-golden gleams in Jenny's hair as she sat before the glow with Harry in her lap and an adoring sister each side. Susan was outraged. Most certainly the only possible way to conduct lessons was sitting rigid at the table, with small cold fingers pushing a slate-pencil up and down compound addition or into the intricacies of dictation, or standing with hands behind your back to repeat your task. And no child could ever be learning while it looked as happy as Mary and Phœbe did. Susan's new status of grandmother to be edged her tongue: "What is all this? I thought the children were at lessons, Jenny."

"They are," Jenny laughed over Harry's black head. She was always laughing, though how she could have the face, with her page 307younger sister already almost a mother … "I'm telling them about the Pillars of Hercules" said Jenny.

"Pillows of Harkales? What next, I'd like to know?" Susan at a loss was always very superior.

"The Bed of Procrustes next," said Jenny. She knew it was wicked in her, for, after all, mothers are mothers even if only Susans. But if she had taught Brevis things, he also had taught her. "It's dishonest to pretend to yourself what you know isn't true," he said. And although Jenny retorted that no woman could live unless she occasionally believed what she knew to be untrue, one had to concede that Brevis was right. Mamma trying to be superior only made a fool of herself, and Madam's granddaughter knew it as truly as ever Madam did. Here Mary, who never had the wit to be silent, volunteered: "It isn't feather pillows, Mamma. It's stone pillars."

Susan pounced. Before Madam she was a worm and always would be. But where was the use of producing a nursery if you couldn't turn in it? Her broad dull face quickened and reddened. Her voice went up: "You are a very forward little miss, Mary, and I wonder at you. Go stand in the corner this instant, and what I'm to do with you, always being punished, I can't think. Yesterday you upset your poor papa, and now you're at it again. Phœbe never does, and she's a half-hour younger."

In the corner simple Mary bellowed. Yesterday had been terrible, what with Papa appearing in the sudden way he had and asking questions to which no one knew the answers. And indeed she had tried her best; and when Papa asked, "How is Tasmania governed?" she remembered what Mr. Beverley had said last week and answered, "Fairly well." And then Papa had ordered her into the corner, and here was Mamma doing the same. And although Sister Jenny always kissed and comforted afterwards, life was very ha-ard.

Here Mary's crying so overcame her that Susan got in before Jenny, and kissed and forgave. And so went off, leaving Jenny to gather up the shattered morale of the school-room and stay it with Mangnall's Questions (in black), Butler's Spelling (in dull red), The Child's Guide (in a light marble), and Dr. Lardner's Common Things in a colour to match, Jenny knew that she page 308was probably a very bad teacher because she found life so gay, even in school-rooms. But to-day it was not gay, with Brevis and Mab away after the bush-rangers; and only God knew what was to happen before night.

Downstairs Susan fretted; scolded Cook out in the great kitchen; scolded Golly for running her finger round the yellow crinkled cream on the dairy pans before she used the skimmer. She was thinking of Mark, of Charlotte. Finally she put on her bonnet and sent for the barouche. "Lottie may need me," she said to Madam, who, having roused the Captain's temper by refusing to let him follow the hunt, was glad to get rid of her. On arriving at Bredon Cottage she found that Charlotte, shaken out of her calm for once by thought of Mark out on the ranges among the bullets, had need of her indeed.

"Now, we'll have the doctor here in no time, Lottie, my love," said Susan, competently, and took off her bonnet.

It was so perfect a day that Jenny found it hard to bear. Hot and still, as though it held its breath in suspense. Toward evening she could bear it no longer.

"Get on your habits, girls, and we'll go to meet them," she said.

But Fanny preferred to finish her drawing. Fanny, with her pale gold hair and skin like an inner shell, rarely did anything vital. A maiden asleep, this pretty sentimental Fanny, waiting for love to waken her long slender limbs and blue languid eyes…. But she'll never get out of it half of what I do, thought Jenny, riding off with the sturdy twins; all three buttoned into the tight dark habits with skirts almost trailing the ground, all three nearly extinguished by the broad felt hats with their dark sweeping feathers.

The last evening glow bathed the world in gold, leaving the distant ranges blue feather heaps on a pink sky. Horses and cattle stood contented in the paddocks, their black shadows stretching far on the tawny grass. In the warm, close woods bronze-wing pigeons and doves were cooing, and a flock of shining grey summer birds rose from a native cherry tree that had rooted near a tall clump of blackwoods by a creek and melted into the woods like soft smoke…. The native cherry can't live alone, because page 309it lives on the roots of others, Jenny thought, watching the twins race their ponies on the grassy side of the road…. Am I a native cherry? I don't feel I could live without Brevis.

Was this, she wondered, love or partly the natural incompetence in which she had been so carefully trained as her younger sisters were trained now? Obey your elders. Do as you're told. Remember that we know best. It is not nice for young girls to ask such questions. How she knew those slogans by heart I Lottie, thinking herself so wise, had gone to Mark ignorant as a baby, merely exchanging one domination for another. Her cry now was always "I'll ask Mark," just as it had been "I'll ask Mamma." And Mamma had always asked Papa, who really knew no more than the rest of them, but was accepted as infallible because he was a man. Fanny would go to her husband—she would marry the first man she was allowed to—even less informed about life than Charlotte, because she was not naturally inquisitive. And Jenny would go to Brevis …?

Well, what she had learned she had learned for herself, with, she knew, much of it distorted and with many gaps between. But life with Brevis would put all this in perspective, round out the angularities, give solid ground to tread on…. And anyway, she thought, puckishly, I know that Lottie is going to have a baby, although they all think that I don't…. She contemplated with delight Susan's shocked amaze, Lottie's embarrassment when, on the day of its arrival, she would present it with a robe on which she had been working for months…. How indecent they will think me, she thought, trotting after the twins. Then she signed. "All this waste of womanhood and crippling of intellect because men like us young and tender! Dear Lord, I thank thee," she murmured, "for Brevis's open mind."

Out of the twilight rode a cluster of dark figures. On the grassy side a cow feeding tolled its monotonous bell. Jenny pulled up with a sudden stound at her heart. Nor could she look until Brevis came riding, talking cheerfully of his hunger. Mab followed. He also tried to be cheerful, but did not succeed well. His face had a blotched look, as though too many emotions were at war there.

"No New Zealand this year, dear maid. We'll have to write off page 310that somehow. But when I think that Snow would have died at Port Arthur but for me …"

"He would never have been there but for you, apparently," said Brevis. "Bury your mistakes, Mr. Comyn, as the doctors do. Man can't afford to be weak with his fellows or they'll get him down."

What a damnable creed!" said Mab, riding on with his head low. But Jenny rode with Brevis; and above them the wild black swans flew clanging by into the scarlet west, and behind in the dusk between the fragrant trees creaked a cart bearing the dead body of Snow and the suffering body of one of the young farmers who had been shot in the groin. Jenny, for once, had no pity for either of them. She had got her man back, alive, alive!

While she was brushing the twins' hair before dinner Susan came into the room, so brimming with excitement that Jenny knew in a moment. Poor dear Lottie!

"I have wonderful news for you, Jenny, Mary, Phœbe!" cried Susan. "Your sister Charlotte has a dear little baby. A girl. What do you think of that?"

"Oh, where did she get it from, Mamma?" cried Mary.

Susan's beatific, mysterious smile included her three daughters. "Why, the doctor brought it in his carpet-bag," she said, and hurried out.

Jenny went to her room and unfolded by candle-light the robe rich with delicate stitchery and fine lace. She thought: I wonder if Mamma could stand it if I gave it to her just now.

IV

In Launceston Mab was very bitter with himself to Gamaliel. "You should kick me out," he said, banging about the neat office where Gamaliel sat all day with his hat on and the brain under it working full time. "I'm a Jonah. I spoil everything I put my hands on. Did you know I had a block in Collins Street when Melbourne began? I'd be a millionaire now, only I sold it for a song. I can never hold on to anything, not even what better men intrust me with."

page 311

"I beg thee do not talk nonsense," said Gamaliel, thinking that anyone with the looks and vitality of Mab Comyn had enough for which to thank the gods. "Next year may be better for New Zealand, in any case. Will thee give me thy opinion on these samples of raw hides?"

While Gamaliel sat late in his office Mab went home to the rooms they shared out on the Elphin Road. But the stuffed parrots and shell frames with which their landlady had so urgently furnished the sitting-room drove Mab mad to-night. All his bulwarks seemed to have gone down in this last smash. Was a man not to have pity on his fellows, try to undo his earlier wrongs? Bury them, young Brevis had said. Bury your mistakes. By hell! that was what Brevis would do, and he would always get on. He had taken Jenny from Mab, just as he would take any and everything he had a mind to. And now that Mab had sunk a thousand pounds in debt, with no hope of repaying Gamaliel, he longed for Jenny's comforting arms; for Julia, who would never comfort him any more. And then, sullenly, came the old suggestion: there were always other women.

With a fierce gesture he clapped on his hat and went out, going fast through the dark streets to a place he once had known. It was perhaps the most notorious house along that water-front so frequented by sailors and men from the ends of the earth; and the long sanded room was full when he went into it. Full with smoke and the fumes of spirits and men sitting at the little tables, with girls upon their knees. To the girl who came with bold eyes and immature shoulders that stuck out of her tawdry gown he submitted himself indifferently. They found a table and two brandies were brought. "Or wine?" said Mab. "Would you sooner have port?"

"Not yet," she said, sipping her brandy, talking in little phrases. But he did not hear a word she said. Already he wished that he had not come; knew that these stale pleasures had no more hold on him.

Back in the steamy smoke a rough voice was singing the catch of a sea-chanty:

"So, fare ye well, my bonny young girl,
We're bound for the Rio Grande …"

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The girl smiled at Mab half wistfully. Her lips were young and full. He felt stupidly that he was not doing his share in the entertaining, and pulled his chair nearer. Now he could see, at the next table but one, a face that he knew and yet surely did not know. It could not be Brevis sitting there, drunken and dishevelled, his arm round the neck of a giggling girl who was playing with his hair? It could not be Brevis hiccuping out fragments of some little Italian song and beating time with a dark, delicate hand in a puddle of wine on the table?

Mab pushed back his chair so abruptly that it fell over. He went down the room and caught Brevis by the arm. "What in hell are you doing here, Brevis?"

Brevis looked up. His eyes were reddened and wild. His face was red. It had a loosened look, as though the moral disintegration which brought him here had extended already to his features.

"Hello, dear love!" he croaked, and burst again into song:

"Good-night, dear love. Goo-night, dear love.
H-Heav'n's fairest angels wash o'er thee …"

"You're drunk," said Mab. He was too bewildered to know how to meet this. To drink anywhere was sufficiently unlike Brevis. To be drunk here and under these conditions was unbelievable. "Anything wrong?" he said helplessly.

"Why, yes, dear love." Brevis waggled his head. "The world's wrong. You're wrong. We're all wrong. God's wrong——"

"Stop it!" said Mab, sternly. He felt the battery of wolfish eyes on them now from all corners of the room. "Get up and come out of this at once." It did not seem to him that he could bear to see the man whom Jenny loved sit there another moment.

"You're mad," he said.

"Exactly," said Brevis, with profound gravity. He looked it, this cool, self-contained, cynical Brevis so suddenly gone to pieces. "Rebuke me not, dear sir, for I am kinsman to Despair." He lifted the girl away from him as though she had been a scarf or a coat, Mab thought, and began confidentially: "Not being able to have Jenny and not 'tending any more Frasquita, wha'd you do? I s-say … wh' you do, eh?"

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Mab was terrified. What was this about Jenny? Not dead? She couldn't be dead. To the proprietor, who came up a little hectoring, he said abruptly: "Get me a cab at once and help me put this gentleman into it. He's a friend of mine. At once! Do you hear!"

The man did not wait to protest. He fled before this black imperious giant who looked as if he could have wiped the floor with him; and in a very few minutes Brevis was bundled into a four-wheeler with his hat over his eyes and Mab had jumped in beside him, slamming the door. Only then did he trust himself to speak. "Now then; what is this about Jenny?"

"Be gentleman … please." Brevis leaned against him "Do' m'shun ladies … public place."

"My God, man!" cried Mab, in anguish. "Tell me. Is she dead?"

"No," said Brevis, suddenly high and clear. "And neither is Frasquita. I've g-got 'em both. Mormon." And he suddenly began to weep.