THE MAYOR’S DEATH

When the Mayor ordered out the 69th and 22d regiments, the sole remnants of the large militia forces of the city, he enjoined their commands to protect the properties at Carrara. At the same time, even as his messages flew to their destinations, Bomber was awaiting the influx of the men intended to effect its destruction. He had made his headquarters in the Park on St. George’s Hill, and he was not disappointed in the rapid concentration of an armed multitude. They came from the east, approaching their improvised _rendez-vous_ over the Washington Bridge, and some moved southward from the north, reaching their position, over the hills of Fordham by the Mosholu Driveway, tramping in files or companies, all the way from the low lands of West Farms. The riot at the Municipal Building and the City Hall began at night-fall—about six o’clock,—and had been thwarted and defeated somewhere between nine and ten. The refugees whose perils we have recounted, had escaped to the roof of the Municipal Building at six, had been taken off about eight-thirty, and had returned to the north-central part of the city where this story has just left them, seeking safety and refuge at—it may be stated—nine, for the dial of the clock has some reference to the remaining incidents of this narrative.

The Mayor, after the repulse of the mob, had sent in a call for the ambulances, and essayed himself to help the wounded on both sides. It was a sorrowful and bitter sight. This, he thought, had at last been the outcome of the years of increasing class hatred. His heart bled for it; the fame of the noble city vanished, grown so beautiful and crowded too with manifold means of mercy! Was it just; was it right; was he to blame! The accusation smote him with an insufferable agony. He had worked hard to heal these social wounds, and the pride, the joy, alleviating his forlorn sense of desertion, had been an exulting realization that he had done so in these last months of tireless effort. And now—this pitiful cheerless tragic sequel! Tears started to his eyes, and sobs almost broke from his lips. He had loved New York so well and all its people. Was everything he loved to disappoint him?—and then the thought of the endangered Carrara flashed through his mind. He stood up, rising from the task of helping a poor wretch into an ambulance, with the young doctor that accompanied it, and saw his secretary Mr. Briggs following him.

He turned towards him almost with a motion of anger; this man had perhaps steeled his heart, blinded his sympathies, made him ruthless in the use of power! He knew his worth but it was a worth caked into a rigidity of cruel formalism by the prejudices of industrial needs, the set phrases of an apprehensive Capitalism. Personally he—the Mayor—had no faith, as faiths are counted, but he worshipped the ideal of a social Brotherhood—whatever that might be called. Perhaps he had allowed this man to obliterate this picture too easily with his incessant lectures, his frigidism, his secularity. He let his resentment flame out:

“Perhaps this Sir is your work—this slaughter—this fratricide. This is the outcome of the discord you love to foment. Do you like it?”

He advanced towards him almost with a menace in his voice and action.

Mr. Briggs stopped suddenly and looked at the Mayor, just long enough to let the shadow of something like contemptuous pity steal into his eyes and then quietly answered:

“No Sir, it is not my work—nor YOURS; I have just put Tom Ratler in an ambulance and sent him to the hospital. I found him unconscious lying over there against the railing of the park.”

The Mayor was sincerely fond of Tom, and this information startled him out of all his brooding misgivings; over the field the doctors and nurses were working, lamps moved from place to place, groans too issued from many quarters; the police from the Hall covered the ground, and the outskirts of the park swarmed with crowds as the police pushed backward the sullen or the indifferent or the curious. The rioters had apparently vanished. Briggs told the Mayor he had sent to the same hospital and in the same ambulance Tom’s bitter enemy, Poniatowsky and with them had gone Jessie Longtinsky, though he added:

“Her predicament is painful, they are both her lovers; she fears one and loves the other; I need not say which is which,” and the speaker looked oddly at the Mayor and smiled.

“How did it happen; was Tom in the fight?” asked the Mayor.

“Well, I think he _was_, and he was fighting his dearest foe—that Poniatowsky—they are both near the end of things.”

Pain came into the Mayor’s face, and some reminiscent revery held him for an instant. He looked over the workers gradually finishing the gruesome duty of getting the dead together, and despatching the wounded away to the hospitals. He turned again to Mr. Briggs:

“See that every one here—striker—” the word brought a sigh from his lips—were these the men he had repulsed?—“Ah—rioter and policeman alike are attended to. I shall take the machine and go north—to Carrara—”

Mr. Briggs was inclined to resist this determination at first, but he understood the Mayor’s feelings too well, and he really feared his outbursts if he provoked them; they could be unpleasantly vindictive and ugly; he would let nothing separate him from the Mayor. The man had been his best friend and he almost adored certain qualities in the Mayor, though he cherished a contempt for his dreams of social rehabilitation.

“Everything shall be attended to as you wish. But Sir if I might be permitted to offer one word of advice; it seems to me——”

“Not another word Briggs; the worst outbreak will be at Carrara—I know it. The very sight of those white palaces will make the blood boil in the veins of these unhappy, these misguided men. They will feel there as if they were about to throttle their enemy, kill him in his lair. If I can I will prevent it—whatever happens——”

He waved his hand and walked rapidly away; Briggs watched his disappearing form sadly. He was not a man of psychic sensibility but somehow he felt that a gulf of final separation was opening between him and the Mayor, and in that gulf lay the prostrate body of his master. A few moments later the Mayor shot from the City Hall park moving through a lane made for him by the police. His vehicle passed up Broadway which was streaming with crowds, restlessly surging towards and from the City Hall. Except for the trolley cars that occupied it, as they do to-day, there were no other carriages than the Mayor’s and it swiftly sped on its way.

A few recognized the Mayor’s automobile, and a shout or some hurled defiance, a cheer, a query, or simply the amazed gaze of the spectators greeted him. The Mayor was buried in his own excited thoughts. He felt the critical terror of this day, and he revolted with his whole soul against the needlessness, the awful consequences of it. It was not simply the pain of sympathy and bereavement, but the more disturbing dread of a disordered state, with civil unrest and embittered irreconcilable social elements, whose enmities would corrode the foundations of government and infiltrate all the veins and circulations of political life.

Sunk in the pillows of the Limousine he pondered over the action he should now take. He was not unacquainted with previous threats made against Carrara and he understood the hideous rage of the Longtinsky people. That man’s hatred of Helen Lorimer possessed him like a consuming fever. And now her home was to be destroyed, if it were possible, and she—his heart almost stopped at the thought—herself was in danger. And while the Mayor glided northward on the spinning wheels of his noiseless carriage, at intervals bruising the silence with its clamorous honk, and always sweeping the ground before it with two broad brushes of light; while Helen Lorimer and Amato and Mr. Moser were searching for a conveyance to the same destination as the Mayor’s; while the militiamen were hurrying to their armories expecting a sanguinary struggle at the same point, Bomber had anticipated these contrasted forces of opposition, and—though much later than he hoped—had moved down the Dyckman road and already was filing in three columns through Nagle, Sherman and Post Avenues to the marble terraces of Carrara, aiming especially to capture the home and mistress of the Lorimer villa.

Bomber was a man after Longtinsky’s own heart, and he had moulded him to his purposes, inflaming a bitter and criminal nature with the promise of gain, and filling his ears and mind with the murmurs of envy. An inordinate conceit, a feeling of injury, that he was the victim of a false social system, and a heart grown ruthless from brooding over imaginary wrongs, made him a fit instrument to accomplish Longtinsky’s designs. Bomber was the child of an Irish mother and an American father, and he inherited the verbal fluency of the first, with the undaunted self-confidence of the latter, and he had wandered far from the moral fortitude of both. His vanity, and the smoothness of his tongue had hurried him into foolish enterprises, and credulity and lack of discretion had invariably brought about his ruin. These disappointments had vexed his self-esteem and soured him. He had not been saved the consequences of an admired physical charm, and indulgences had perverted still more the easy rules of his life. Yet the strangest circumstance of this man’s life remains untold. HE TOO LOVED HELEN LORIMER.

At the death of his parents, Bomber inherited enough money to be able to live much as he wished. He had received a fairly good education, an education which might have been improved, if he had himself helped more the opportunities accompanying it. The city’s pleasures he understood, and his skill in talking, his dalliance with the brighter novelties of living, had given him a sort of vogue in a fast set of young men, among whom, occasionally, he met some belonging to the acquaintances of the beautiful Helen Lorimer. This was of course some years before. Bomber had often seen the famous lady at public places of entertainment, the theatres, the opera, at concerts—Bomber had some skill himself in playing, and much musical taste—and he had actually spoken with her at her Settlement House, when he endeavored to put himself in as good a light as possible, and thought that he had succeeded. Contact with women had bred in him an infatuation, a very great sense of his conquering personal charm. He felt pretty sure that Helen Lorimer must have noted it too. At the time he stood well, and the sharp reverses that later left him penniless had not yet developed. He had just then no use for socialism and rather sported his aristocratic prejudices.

He undertook to give the “young Portia of the city,” as he called Miss Lorimer, advice in some well written letters, upon her various projects, and assiduously set himself about getting into her graces by an apparent interest in the poor—an hypocritical affectation then. The letters had been answered by Miss Lorimer’s secretary and a little curtly. Then he made a mistake, a most ill-considered blunder. He told her in a letter, full of ridiculous tropes and foolish imagery—a letter such as self-deluded men often write when fate drives them to their ruin—that he loved her. The letter reached Helen Lorimer. She blushed, laughed and carefully burned it up. Bomber waited for an answer. So intolerable was his conceit that he really deceived himself into believing that Miss Lorimer’s silence was to be interpreted as a favorable sign of her favor, and—making “his will lord of his reason”—wrote her another fatuous epistle. This letter Miss Lorimer did not see; it fell into the hands of her uncle, who, opening it by a mistake and catching its contents fell into a tremendous rage, and in an answer told the incorrigible Bomber that he was a jackass, that his effrontery deserved public exposure, that Miss Lorimer was insulted by any association with his name.

Bomber writhed under this repulse, and then his fortune failed, his plans went all wrong, his money vanished, the better sort of his companions deserted him, and he fell from round to round in the scale of decency, and he turned with an almost impious hatred upon all he had once admired. Bitten by jealousy, his heart poisoned by failure, his stupid pride affronted, almost to others a spectacle of indigence, the ulcer of discontent wore into his soul and he handed himself over to the forces of annihilation. He made a living by conceiving vitriolic attacks upon property, upon reputations, and he avenged himself for his repulse by insinuations, false, cruel and repulsive, on the fair name of Helen Lorimer.

The man became furiously bestial. His strength, his youth, carried him through trials of dissipation, that less stalwart or inured natures would have crumbled or decayed under. The fever of denunciation grew on him; Longtinsky’s plan, mad, impossible, delirious, suited him precisely. He rushed into it and helped its author to more completely arrange and perfect its details. He shared with Longtinsky the overmastering control of the whole impudent and hopeless scheme. But it was the chance to him for revenge! His impatience overcame every scruple, and he revelled in the dream of destroying the homes of Carrara, the villa of the Lorimers—even, in some more atrocious moments of desire of capturing, enslaving the queen of that proud society!

Thus, when Bomber led his little army to destruction, he found himself where at last he might work out his long cherished hopes. And it was a strange fact that in the notable uprising of this distant day, the leaders were entirely selfish—most of them—while the devoted believers in some sort of social upheaval, the men who formed the rank and file of the movement, were more moved by ideas of justice, and of readjustment, in which their rights would be restored and their ills righted.

The shuffling lines of men came down the long hill of Fort George, they turned from Dyckman Street into the three avenues which lead southwesterly to the Kingsbridge Road. There was no uniform among them; here and there a red ribbon, and an occasional show of brass buttons in some frayed coat, hardly helped the physical homogeneity of about twelve hundred men of all sizes and service. Bomber had been disappointed at the numbers of his army, and he had a discouraged feeling about their enthusiasm. They were the enrolled members of an anarchistic society, and probably would fight well if it came to fighting. Longtinsky had once insisted that with any show of force, the Mayor would compromise—and then, on some favorable terms perhaps, they would gain power and there would be an UPRISING.

It all seemed simple enough, planned in a guarded room. Out in the open, beneath the stars the conquest of the city was more a matter of daring than words. So Bomber thought. Yet his hopes blinded him to fear. He did not expect any difficulties at Carrara. The place should be destroyed. He almost laughed to think of it. The police would be kept busy at the City Hall. Perhaps Helen Lorimer would have a little more respect for him after that!—suppose he took her a prisoner—an hostage of that sort, might make the stubborn necks and the dull heads of the Plum-Puddings bend, and think just a little. Indeed he was not averse to dwell upon the favorable chance of a conversation with Miss Lorimer and the diabolical fancy entered his mind of making some matrimonial agreement with her. So banal and ludicrous is a depraved vanity!

Bomber’s tall frame had been moving among the men, as they slowly assembled, painting in glowing colors the ease of their work, and just what it was. They would be almost unopposed. Scouts had brought in the news that Carrara was being deserted; whether the Lorimer villa was empty was uncertain; lights were burning there, and figures had been seen moving in the chambers. But that was of no consequence—only some frightened women! Bomber naturally thought that Miss Lorimer had returned home from the trial, which, it was universally known, she had most punctually attended each day. He did not know of the conflagration and disaster at the Municipal Building.

He told his gloating hearers that the Revolution had been started at the City Hall—Putkof had set the shipping afire throughout the East Side—all the prisoners would be liberated, the city was panic-stricken—nerveless; the militia away—no regular troop anywhere around—the garrisons at the forts, at the Narrows sent away, and those at Throg’s Neck as well. They would win on their own terms. This was their chance to wipe out Carrara—the luxurious homes of their masters, the tyrants of wealth, the sleek vainglorious idlers who fattened on the sweat and earnings and skill and daily risks of the workers.

So he walked and so he talked—yet he had misgivings. One thing was annoying; his guns, his ammunition, had not arrived. They were concealed in an empty house at High Bridge, and the wagons drawing them with muffled wheels had not appeared. Only a few of those that pushed their way into the entrance of the park carried arms. However, he had no doubt that the guns would come—it made things late—though, and time counted for something. But a hollowness in the whole effort suddenly struck him; for one instant the great reserves of defence in the mammoth city were indeed abroad, but how long would it take for the four quarters of the country to pour in their support—how long before these reserves themselves would be storming his little host with all the implements of death? Unless—Ah, he pinned some hope on that—unless as Longtinsky told him, the Time EVERYWHERE was ripe for Revolution. He half believed it. The thought gave him nerve and confidence.

The attacks of the rioters at the City Hall, and on the East Side, had summoned all the police to the southern districts of the city, and Bomber, acquainted with the fact of the presence of the members of the 22d and 69th regiments in the city, was convinced that they would not be able to interfere with him. The Mayor’s warning and his own fears as well were destined to frustrate these hopes.

Still no supplies. Bomber chafed and raged—already more than an hour had been lost. He was general enough to realize the importance of promptness. Messenger after messenger had been despatched to High Bridge, and none had returned. Bomber was in a group of his lieutenants at the brow of the hill overlooking the Inwood depression, and the viaduct, to Kingsbridge, of the present subway. His first move had been to interrupt the trains of the Subway, and a detachment of his men had pushed their way up to the Dyckman Street station, and into the opening of the long tunnel leading south to 155th street—but no trains were running, the company deeming it too dangerous for one thing, and because orders from the armories requisitioned them for the service of the troops.

Still Bomber’s men tore up the free rails of the tracks, for a short distance.

“What in thunder holds those men—Here—” to a dozen staring auditors who happened to carry guns on their shoulders, “Get down to High Bridge, a pack of you—Perhaps help is needed—Wait—” the men turned—“Let more of you go. There is a kit of tools up on the balcony—” pointing to the pleasure house raised in soaring terraces at the highest point of the park—“a few crowbars may help you—and for that matter a bomb or so—” he added savagely, for it was Bomber who gave these orders.

“Perhaps they can’t get at the guns and ammunition. Hammer everything to Hell, and bring them up;” then turning aside to a man who stood apart, watching the fitful signs of agitation across the valley, on the Carrara Hills—“We’re running our heads into a noose perhaps—Eh—but if we stand here and wait for sunrise it will be cold bullets!—”

The man did not stir; the whispered fear did not seem to interest him, it certainly failed to withdraw his scrutiny from the pale white palaces, now growing more and more indistinct, as the lights went out, or again illumined in a spectral glare as some white flash flared in the courtyards, or the gleam of a descending rocket shone on them. At length the man dropped his glass, and showed he was not unconscious of the speaker—but he only muttered—almost as to himself—pointing with his disengaged hand to the opposite rim of land.

“Win that and if the worst comes—there are ways out—Money provides.”

Bomber seized his arm, drew him around to face himself, and then dropped his hands on the man’s shoulders and brought his face close to his:

“Yes, I know it does—but will a few empty houses furnish it? Do you know anything?”

“Know,” said the other returning the gaze fearlessly, and just perceptibly shrinking backward, as if finding this menacing scrutiny repugnant;—“I know that those money-bags have been storing coins and greenbacks in their safes for months. They expected this—some of them. Sly foxes, they knew the cry of the hounds long before they saw their teeth—they’re ready to give us the slip—Trap ’em and you are made. They’ve sold stocks, bonds everything and were getting their plunder together to slip over to Canada, make a dash for Europe, Mexico, anywhere—They’re too late. Bomber, if our hands close on that treasure we can take the same trip. Canada or any place might be a happier home for us than this city.”

Bomber looked nervously around. No one stood very close to them—the occasional rockets rising languidly from point to point in Carrara intimating some telegraphy between the houses, as if preparations or alarm were keeping their occupants busy, had attracted every eye. Bomber pulled his friend farther away from any chance interruption; his voice sank to a whisper, and his mouth sought his companion’s ear:

“I’ve been thinking of the same thing—But can we do it?”

“Do it—I can. You know me, a bank-cracksman for years. I’ve not learned my trade for nothing. Get me in those houses yonder and I’ll find the bottoms of their long purses. Trust me.”

A cry startled them. They looked behind them, and they saw the flames shooting upward in the park—The pleasure house was burning—It was this blaze, then culminating into a vast pyre, that the frightened travellers in the balloon saw a half hour or so later.

It caused almost as much consternation to Bomber and his advisers. Their force was revealed—the increasing light brought out with terrible distinctness the formless straggling groups—their position—and in its discovering brilliancy, illumined the long slant hill, on which a few companies of men were moving. It conveyed a further terror to Carrara—the rockets ascended in sudden flight from new points. Evidently it was interpreted as a signal for the opening of the anticipated attack.

Bomber was quick to act on his part. He left the man whose sordid selfishness and cynical opportunism were already shared by himself, and ordering his subalterns to rush through the crowds, commanded them to hurry down to the hillside and screen themselves in the oblique avenues below—Nagle, Sherman, and Post Avenues—somewhat further away from this unfavorable exposure.

The conflagration had been started by the men whom Bomber had despatched to High Bridge. In rummaging about for the crowbars and picks, as weapons of assault on the closed doors that perhaps yet foiled the rioters’ plans they had upset an oil lamp, whose trailing fringes of flame had ignited the woodwork of the well dried and combustible pleasure house, and, as if responsive to the growing alarm of the great city, that frail fabric burst into a sheet of swerving and dazzling light. The men in companies and scattered arrangements of files and groups ran down the hill, and it was a few last individuals that Helen Lorimer and Amato saw as they passed overhead later. The floating habitation caused a little consternation to the men yet unequipped for the attack upon Carrara, and Bomber watched it with misgivings, while to the anxious sentinels—both men and women—on Carrara, it was hailed as an omen of rescue.

In Carrara, to which place we must now direct our inspection, all was in confusion, and in the dismay, increased every moment by new disquieting news brought in by scouts, or received over the telephone and by messengers, mingled the baleful prognostications of some special upheaval, and the long dreaded and often forewarned condition of affairs in the city was soon understood, though all the happenings at the City Hall were not reported, and when it became apparent that an attack was to be made upon Carrara itself, the householders hurried together and council was taken as to what was to be done.

Some argued for instant evacuation, others believed that an armed resistance was possible, but that bold decision was coolly shown to be impossible, unless the united men—proprietors and servants—garrisoned some one of the stronger houses and deserted the rest. Julieta Lorimer was in despair over the continued absence of her daughter, and no information could be secured from the offices down town while the few who in some way had heard of the incarceration of the inmates in the Municipal Building, and among them Helen Lorimer, and its consequent burning, none dared to tell the awful tale.

Perhaps in all three hundred men could be mustered, and these poorly supplied with arms, and resistance seemed hopeless with this number against the overwhelming odds. There had not been much time for deliberation, but such time as was allowed was well employed. Very helpful to the householders was the path of communication between the villas. It ran along the crest of the ridge irregularly set with alcoves, stone benches, and ascending and descending steps that gave it a most pleasing variety. Over this, that evening, the neighbors passed and their hurried conference was made at the home of Helen Lorimer. Hither came the family heads, young and less prudent younger members, and gathering with them a squad of the male dependents who were not all disposed to encourage a resistance to the approaching invasion.

The impending danger hastened the deliberations. There seemed to the wiser ones but one thing to do. It was a partial retreat, taking with them such conveniently removable articles of great value as they could gather, and retire together to one of the strong Norman keep-like erection on the Bolton Road, just over the Dyckman Street pass to the Hudson River. If extremities, too serious, threatened them there, escape could again be effected to the river itself immediately behind, and finally embarkation in some steamboat to be at once summoned and held in readiness. The season had so far advanced that the many steam yachts that were familiar features on the shore line of the river at Carrara were no longer to be seen. They had retired to the winter station, as at present, near Gowanus on the Long Island shores.

The last words of directions were spoken by a Duncan, the owner of the picturesque mansion where they were to find refuge:

“Shut, lock and barricade all the entrances of your homes, the more passive resistance of that sort we can devise the better. Remove all valuables, the things you especially value of small size; concentrate at my home and await relief. It must come! Should we be forced into an extremity we can beat a retreat to the river and escape. This seems the safest way. We are powerless against such odds.”

And so the hurried evacuation was made, while signal lights—the rockets seen by Bomber—arose from point to point as a constant warning for vigilance and for haste. There was much confusion. In the short time possible to be employed before the invasion began, it was out of the question to carry away the many things that each householder dearly wished to save, and the bustle and struggle of uncertainty was consequently frequent and prolonged. Doors banged, improvised barricades were formed against the backs of the entrances, windows were shut and fastened, the chasing of servants up and down the stairs, the calls of the younger men and the impatient orders of the older with many feminine sighs and exclamations were mingled with the miscellaneous and confused murmurs and more violent noises, proceeding from the opening and shutting of safe doors, the secreting of objects of especial interest—and too large for removal—in closets and cellars, while constantly mishaps, punctuated with cries and recriminations, arose and added to the panic and disorder.

Amid it all Julieta Lorimer sat in her chamber bowed in prayer for the safety of her daughter. She had quickly brought together the jewelry of Helen, and her own, and packed the treasured trinkets in a small agate-mosaic casket that now lay on the bed in front of her. All sorts of dreadful possibilities crowded in her mind, racked to the limit of endurance with fearful surmises, as happening to her child. The thought of Amato kept up her courage. She knew his readiness and courage, and she trusted his devotion.

How many wistful pictures of the past filled her mental vista of the almost forgotten years—the years of Robert’s tempestuous courtship, the birth of Helen, the increasing affection and chivalrous loyalty of her husband, the periods of travel over the fair face of the world, their mutual wonder of the beauty and promise of the girl growing up in the revolving seasons, and gaining new charms of person and mind, her splendid adoration of high ideals, and her rich and embracing love of all human kind, her distinction, the patrician courtesy, the austere ambition and her peculiar sweetness of thought and word.

How Robert adored her; she saw them again and again walking together in a very ecstacy of genial communion, and, as though breathed upon her from the pregnant air, there came to her there, almost audibly, the accents of his wonder and delight as he told her of Helen’s unfolding excellence. She, whose respite from sorrow for the death of her own loved one, had only come in the intervals of her proud consciousness of the worth and buoyancy, of her daughter, now with terrified questionings looked out in the darkening night, and revolted against the sordid cruelty of circumstance if, in this vulgar exigency of commotion, that daughter’s life became the prey of accident. And as she gazed, half immersed in a praying thoughtfulness, there suddenly came before her eyes in the night the onrushing apparition of the lamp-lit balloon, in which that very daughter glided above her to safety. She had tarried long. Carrara was emptied and yet she remained. In the headlong flight her absence had escaped attention, even among her own fleeing servants.

And yet she did not stir, for now she thought of Helen’s unhappiness, the shocking discovery of her uncle’s perfidy, and the miserable disappointment that had darkened her life. Julieta sighed—she could not altogether regret it—Amato pleased her more; indeed, thus falling into reveries, she married him to her, and then the strange fervency of the desire of both to see the Pope placed in America and the new missionizing plan rose before her, and she forgot her grief, almost smiling over the Quixotic dream—for so it seemed to her. And yet no movement; she saw the thickening clusters of rockets, the frightening reminder of danger in the sheets of flame in the burning pleasure house on the hill, and the black crowds of men gathered in slovenly ranks for mischief. The lights yet burned in her room; she realized that they prevented any certain view of the outside, and she rose and extinguished them, and returned to the seat strangely oblivious perhaps in the indulgence of the luxury of her reveries, wherein she drew to her side the vanished dead, careless of remembering.

All had become still in Carrara, the shouts smothered in dull calls, the movement, the sounds of running feet, the opening and shutting of doors, the interrupted grating discords of shoved furniture and reinforced bolts and locks—all was quiet, for the refugees had crushed themselves into the Norman Duncan keep beyond the Dyckman Road. Here some guns had been distributed, a sort of garrison armament formed, scouts sent out, and a beleaguered attitude taken. The precaution was looked after of getting a boat ready at the water’s side behind them, and after some uncertainty and delay it was decided, then and there, to remove the women. Under guard the latter passed down the road to the Hudson in little companies, each with an escort of armed men. In all this commotion and anxiety, the absence of Julieta was somehow quite unnoticed.

Events were hurrying on to some fatal denouement among the rioters. The obstacles, which had delayed the arrival of their stores of guns and ammunition, and which were rightly explained by Bomber as due to the desertion of his allies who had been watching them, thus leaving them strongly locked up, inside barricades demanding destruction before the agents of the rioters could reach them, had at length arrived. The distribution of the arms to the men, the preparation of an advance party with bombs, the slow infiltration of orders to all the men and companies had consumed much time, and when at length the host moved forward along the three avenues—Nagle, Post and Sherman—the hour of nine had long passed.

Bomber had placed himself in the company of bomb-throwers, and the man who had boasted of his skill in discovering the hiding place of treasure was at his side. This little group headed the slow and irregular entrance of the men on the Kingsbridge Road. Immediately before them was the villa of the Lorimers, its marble terraces shining spectrally, and the outlined palace above them on the hillside, destitute of lights, inviting an easy assault. But Bomber feared some ambush, and he ordered a company of younger men—who had been acting as scouts for his army—to steal forward, and make their way through the shrubbery to the top of the eminence, for an observation of the measures of defence taken by the inmates. The men returned and told their chief that apparently the house was deserted. One man had broken in a window pane after forcing a shutter open, and the sound, sharp and crackling, brought no response. Still Bomber doubted, and he again ordered the men to push the examination further, and see the other houses, spy out the gardens, and return. The men dashed back, they were convinced that there was no danger in the abandoned Carrara. After a longer absence they again came back, and made their asseverations so strong that the place was deserted, that Bomber gave orders for the whole body to ascend the terraces and capture the ridge.

Julieta Lorimer raised her head; she had indeed fallen into a half sleep wherein with half muttered prayers and clustering memories her bewildered and exhausted body and mind had taken refuge. She rose and moved to the windows again, almost as if in a dream, to see if there was any sign of her returning daughter. It was the moment in which Bomber’s spies were hurrying back with their reports about the deserted Carrara, the moment when Bomber decided to rush forward and take the houses.

The night was clear but there was no moon, the stars ruled the skies with a soft and remote beauty, but their effects were less apparent over the city of that coming day by reason of the spreading pulsations of the upper light, artificially created and irregularly distributed over the enormous commonwealth. This light, as Tom Ratler noticed on the first evening of his arrival was more concentrated in the lower parts of the city, but it now bathed the foreground of the scene that Julieta looked out upon, though by it flushes of brightness alternated, like shifting clouds, with intervals of penumbral vagueness. Julieta pushed open the windowed door that led to a balcony and stepped out into the ledge formed by its floor, just at that instant when the light grew stronger.

She leaned far out, and her white dress formed a contrast with the shadows on the wall behind her. She was seen by the watching men in the roadway, and for an instant Bomber suspected treachery. And then the thought arose with tempting plausibility that SHE—Helen Lorimer—might have been left alone; this outstretched figure was hers, and he might now be able, under less humiliating conditions, than before, to ask for some consideration at her hands. The stupid dream awoke in him a strange restlessness. He had not been altogether thoughtless about his appearance either. He wore a khaki uniform which became him; its contrast with the rude and often torn garments around their commander had already awakened unfavorable comment. It was regarded with some dissatisfaction. The broad unrolled soft chapeau on his head added its theatrical touch, even gauntleted hands and an unused sabre dangling picturesquely at his manly hip contributed to an impression of dashing chivalry, which he had quite serenely noticed himself. He now strode forward to the middle of the highway, intercepting the movement that had begun to ascend the terraces, and in a loud voice calling upon all to desist.

“He intended to reconnoitre the place himself. He would give a signal for the charge as soon as he had convinced himself that no rascally ambuscade awaited them. He prized their lives, and rather than risk an unnecessary slaughter would first determine the nature of the ground before them. One life,” he grandiloquently concluded, “sacrificed, was better than the loss of many strong men whose strength was now needed for the Renewal of Society, and the establishment of the New Republic.”

The grotesque coxcombery of all this struck one man forcibly, and he cursed the silly display, the bravado of an idiot.

“Why damn him,” he muttered hoarsely—and it was the man of the lock-picking skill, the man who had plotted with Bomber for the chance of interviewing the safes in the Carrara mansions—“Damn him; what good will his maundering over there do. He’s losing time and enough has been lost now to let those tin soldiers get here with their pop guns and do us for ever. Bust the whole shee-bang, rip, tear, and level it! That’s the way and then—GIT.”

Bomber was a mistake and for once the crafty Longtinsky had perhaps miscalculated. But the element of mistake was in the unsuspected fancy this apparently well chosen limb of mischief had for Miss Lorimer, which entangled with his own preposterous personal conceit made him the easy tool of circumstances and circumstances now most ludicrously related to his stupid prepossessions. Nothing can be more mischievous in unsettling a vain man’s sense of relations and propriety, not to say his more important sense of his own position, than the foolish imagination of his possible importance in the eyes of a pretty woman.

Bomber turned his back to his astonished companions, and mounted the steps with rapid strides, his own conviction growing that the white figure above him was indeed Miss Lorimer the nearer he approached the now excited and attending lady who began to awaken from the strange coma of grief and recollection which had held her enchained in a half unconsciousness.

Julieta Lorimer slowly recognized her situation, and something like an intense keenness supervened to make it all plainer to her. She had somehow failed—she now saw—to join the others when they had deserted the Ridge, and she was entrapped in her villa, and stood in the face of the storming rioters. She recalled the commotion of her fleeing friends, and she remembered she had stolen to her room, and here she had become isolated in her own sorrowful and oblivious thoughts. Her faculties were now fully awake; the terror only served to sharpen her appreciation of the predicament she was in. She did not become useless in her fear, but her mind engaged quickly and sharply in the preparation of some sort of defence. Who was this man—a figure ascending in leaps the marble steps—and why did he come alone? Down on the Kingsbridge Road she saw the massed men and women and seemed to discern their faint prolongation back into the avenues. Was it not strange—this immobile mob, voiceless, ominously still—while this man—a leader perhaps advanced all alone?

What was to be done; should she escape and pursue her vanished friends—the thought struck her suddenly that she would rush through the mansion, and turn on all the lights—she perceived the darkness of the place—it might create the appearance of relief or occupation. She hesitated—and there below her under the window’s balcony, the figure looked up to her, and she heard his voice: and noticed that his hat was removed from his head, and something in his accents made her stop, shocked with an incredible impression.

“Miss—Lorimer? I believe—I feel the awkwardness of this—position—but—time presses—I must enter your home—it is deserted—you are alone—you may trust yourself to me—it is an honor I have asked for before, and which then you saw fit to repel—as leader of a new Revolution—the revolution of the great heart of the people you may condescend to treat me—less carelessly—” the words were spoken with a mixture of impudence and menace.

Nothing had escaped Julieta’s ears and her mind worked with the marvellous concentration of memory, acting under the impelling sense of a real danger; she divined the situation; she recalled Bomber’s declaration of love for her daughter—this man is doubtless he—his name she had heard mentioned as the chief of the mob at her doors—she knew that relief was under way—that too she had heard—could she delay this aspirant for Helen’s hand?—keep him awhile—every moment might help—was she equal to the dangerous ruse? At any rate the evident delusion of the speaker must be encouraged.

Almost mechanically she asked—“Is this Mr. Bomber?” the question answered would illuminate the situation, and as she asked it she half turned away so that that gentleman might not discover his mistake.

“Yes I am Bomber, Miss Lorimer. Alaric Mitchess Bomber—I would be happy to assist you in this extremity—there need be no alarm—but the doors of this house must be opened at once—these men—” a flourish of his scabbard indicated the waiting crowds at the foot of the slope—“are in earnest—everywhere the forces of revolt are in motion—the City must succumb—perhaps I could persuade you to negotiate some sort of compromise with the Aristocracy of Carrara—Excuse me, I dread violence but this parley cannot be kept up too long—my men are impatient—”

There flew through Julieta’s mind several projects—and among them was one of startling possibilities—almost too audacious too, full of grave consequence to herself—and yet it tempted her by its amazing daring and shrewdness. She would entrap the leader of the mob—put him under lock and key—she, Julieta Lorimer!—he should be decoyed into the house, and she would agree to meet him within, and then—a smile crept into her face that was darkened the next instant with doubt; the indecision had been noticed by Bomber, and had elicited his threat. But the indecision was gone; Julieta committed herself to the rash expedient—she would take Alaric Mitchess Bomber prisoner. Shades of Longtinsky!!!

“Alaric”—in her sweetest tones—the figure started and stretched itself upward—“I will see you in the house—it is possible we can together do something to prevent mischief, and—if so—perhaps—we may—” the last words were permitted intentionally to fade away into nothingness—conveying thereby to the credulous hearer some indiscreet concession, that made him bound with delight and desire.

“Yes—Yes, Miss Lorimer—may I say Helen?—” the stupidity and dull conceit of the man made her project seem again very plausible to Julieta—“but it must be done quickly—it may be necessary for me to return to the men there”—pointing—“and make them understand—they might suspect treachery—is there no one in the house? They expected a fight and they are in the humour for destruction—you see—I will do all you advise—but——”

“Alaric,” still insinuating and delicious to the ears of the vanquished leader of revolution, “go tell them you are about to confer with Helen Lorimer, who speaks for the whole colony of Carrara—your own eloquence will convince them, or if they cannot be controlled entirely, tell them to be patient a moment—surely you can restrain them, and then come TO ME.” Bomber’s arms actually crossed themselves upon his breast with the unction of an embrace. Julieta saw it. “And we can at least devise some measure for my safety. That is but just, is it not?”

“Helen”—the voice was deep with passion and obedience as well—“let it be so. I will return and speak to them, and _then_ admit—me.”

Julieta hid her face in the silken scarf about her shoulders and leaned down, whispering. “No one is here. I am alone. Come in at the front, the iron gateway through the peristyle, through the front doors. There is a great hall. Ascend the stairway to the dining-room, and then pass into a side room and await me. The side room is a butler’s pantry—you can tell it by the one light that will be alight there. Adieu, Alaric.” The old star of Robert Lorimer’s improvised show retained her skill, and her Italian hand still showed a delightful fineness. But then she had such plastic stuff to treat!

Bomber waved his hat, his gauntleted hand touched his lips. He turned and jumped down the terraces with really splendid youthfulness. His youthfulness did not desert him in the emergency of getting to the top of the gate post of the Lorimer estate; he clambered up somehow, and there in full view, with his hat removed, a few assisting gestures, he delivered his oration.

“Patriots of the New Order, we are about to accept the capitulation of the Aristocrats”—a long rising hiss, culminating in a yell of derision—“Miss Helen Lorimer, of whom we can all admit she possesses the virtues of her class, with none of their faults”—a mixed reception of cheers and hisses greeted this admission—“has agreed to see me in her own palace of art and beauty, and there I shall be permitted to dictate the terms of surrender. Miss Lorimer has had the courage to remain, while all her BRAVE”—uttered with impressive sarcasm—“defenders have fled. I only ask you, my noble comrades——” Bomber was a traitor; while he spoke these words he was secretly turning over in his mind the chances of freeing himself from these now unnecessary associates, and turning body and soul over to the abhorrent aristocrats. Here was the goal of his fondest dreams—becoming with Helen Lorimer rehabilitated, and an ornament of the class he affected to despise.

“I only ask you now to await the results of this interview; when it is finished you shall enter Carrara and POSSESS it.” He paused, and a cheer arose; he interpreted it as his permission—he was too impatient himself to return—he jumped off his elevated rostrum, and as he turned and ran again backward a voice—loud, soaring, he _knew_ it—shouted in the silence, “Al Bomber you’re a LIAR.”

But Bomber had no desire to refute the statement, his heart burned with the strangest hopes, and his self inflation, his fatal aptitude for gallantry approached, as he thought, a new and marvellous satisfaction. He kept on his way unchallenged.

Julieta left the balcony; her heart beat tumultuously; the trick was bold, and desperate—it almost seemed. Would she be successful? There was danger—plenty of it—too; if he suspected; if he brought men back with him; if his hearers were not affected with the reasons for gullibility he succumbed to; if she herself could escape—and WHERE? Certainly the butler’s pantry was a well chosen place for the incarceration of the dashing leader of the New Order. It was practically a strong box—literally a safe—with iron walls and iron doors, where the silver of the family was also kept. Besides entrance from the dining-room, it possessed but one other egress, a back door, fastened on the inside. That she believed was already secured; locked, with the key removed; it was the practice so to do at night. It was to be her hands that would shove the bolts, upon the imprisoned Bomber, from the outside, of the very entrance he would use. Her limbs trembled with the agitation of thinking of the work before her, but the instant she had groped her way down to the spot, turned on the single lamp that would announce the rendez-vous and then secreted herself in an alcove of the dining-room, with her dress covered by a voluminous black overskirt she felt a singular firmness, almost a jubilant expectation. She had concluded to rush from the room at once when the deed was done, and make her way to the Duncan keep.

Suddenly she bethought her that the doors below, the great gate of the entrance also were yet shut. Gathering her dress about her, she descended the stairs, and unlocked and unbolted all. It took time, some strength was required, and her nervous excitement alone made it possible to accomplish it. Of course she became visible to one near at hand, when she pushed her way out into the peristyle, to open the iron gate of the courtyard. She shivered as she crossed the yard; her confidence almost deserted her as she saw through the trellis of the gate the returning figure of the man she was about to capture.

It was indeed only by a superhuman effort she pulled down the huge bolt for he was close upon her. Bomber had detected the woman form moving behind the trellis, as he ascended; he knew it was SHE and he hastened his steps. Julieta felt her heart fail her; she staggered—in another second, before she could possibly return, he would be at her side, and the revelation would be made—she turned irresolutely to run, when an oath almost at her side, as she thought, came to her ears, and the sound of a falling body. Instinctively she turned again, and she saw Bomber sprawling on the outer steps—that unlucky emblem of authority, his sword, had twisted between his legs and tripped him. It was Julieta’s chance.

She raced up the inner steps—those leading to the dining-room—the superb banquet-chamber where we have seen Helen Lorimer dispensing the hospitality of the Lorimers—she crouched in the selected alcove, not far from the open door of the butler’s pantry, where the seductive little light gleamed secretively. She stiffened her resolution, though the mounting beats of her heart warned her of the terrific strain. She heard the rising footsteps—perhaps a little more careful since their proud owner had learned the wisdom of caution—and then something darkened the door of the dining-room. It was he. He stopped; her shuddering heart shrank within her at the suspicion that he saw her. No; he passed on, his eye had seen the interior light of the pantry, and he stood at its entrance. Why did he not enter? The strain was insupportable, the pale light shone on him, though dimly, and he seemed to be examining the place as if fearing a surprise. If he waited longer his accustomed eyes would find her out; there was a little light diffusing from the lamp in the pantry; her hammering heart, it felt so, was itself audible in the dead silence.

Julieta had run a serious risk in assigning the butler’s pantry for a meeting with Bomber. She knew only its peculiar strength and adequacy for service as a prison; she did not know how it had been left by her fleeing servants. The great key which locked both the inner and outer doors was always removed at night by the housekeeper and given to Julieta. She had not received it that night; it was not in her room; she concluded it still remained in the door of the pantry, but had the INNER DOOR BEEN LOCKED? When she descended to the dining-room her first anxiety was to assure herself of the position of the key. Her heart leaped when she found it in the keyhole of the outer door, the door leading from the dining-room. A moment later the lamp was turned on in the pantry, and she tried the inner door. It had been locked. Both locks were identical: one key fitted both. They were large constructions, the key itself ponderous, and it threw three heavy steel bolts when turned.

So far the trap was ready. One imprudence was committed. She left the key in the outer door, but in order to execute her design she took the risk willingly. To insert the key in the dark, to shut the door and turn the lock would be an involved process, and in the delay, and possible bungling, her quarry might have more than enough time to break its net and escape. So the key was left; if Bomber took the precaution to remove the key before entering the ambuscade and to pocket it! Julieta would have been thwarted, and only headlong flight would have saved her.

Bomber still stood at the door of the pantry, almost as if suspicious; it was thus impossible to close it upon him. He even stepped back again, possibly puzzled that the figure which, a minute before had been in the courtyard, should now have so completely vanished. If he struck a match! If he fumbled around and attempted to turn on the lights! Julieta grew dizzy at the thought. She cowered together, her knees trembling, and her hands abjectly pressed upon her face. He looked again into the pantry and—walked in. His unmeasured personal conceit had saved her.

Bomber’s eye had fallen upon the lustrous expanse of a superb silver service-tray; in the half light this immense and beautiful work of the silversmith, hanging on the wall of the pantry, shone softly, and displayed invitingly a damasked surface, and its high decorative borders. It tempted the eye irresistibly. Bomber had actually in his delight with its richness and, in a feverish anticipation of a great success, walked to it, and caught his own reflection in the polished mirror of a central oval of smooth silver. He stooped and observed that his hair had become artistically disarranged, that his cheeks glowed, his eyes—yes, he was sure of it—emitted an unusual light, and his mouth—ah! he smiled, he leaned over to the beguiling picture, when—what was it?—a sluggish thud, and the click of a shot lock!

He turned like a shot animal, his face convulsed with terror; the door was shut; he sprang to it with his strength—and it was considerable—he wrenched at the knob, but though it flew to and fro, nothing yielded. HE WAS A PRISONER. He looked around him; he leaped at the inner door and attempted to open it. Locked! No window, no crevice, no loophole of escape.

“My God,” he groaned aloud, “the she-devil, the tiger, witch, curse her. Am I trapped here like a rat?”

His face grew almost livid; he raised his voice shouting, yelling, shriek after shriek in the bootless effort to call help. He hurled the silver tray at the walls, he searched them with knives but only a steel wall met his fury. And then he sank back on the only chair in the room, in a convulsion of sheer rage and agony.

And Julieta, like a flying cloud, her black skirt lost from her in her flight, sped out of the house, and on the well-known pathway, down and up steps, in front of and behind low shrubs, through archways, quicker and quicker she ran on, stumbling now, even falling, regaining her feet, and yet running on in a vertigo of excitement, the first stages of a terrible reaction.

But while this half ludicrous _intre-acte_ was taking place, events outside of them were rushing on to a tragic end. The waiting army enormously enlarged by the running concourse of sightseers, the various accessions of the idle and vicious, was waiting the return of their fatuous leader. A growing discontent, with an increasing fear that some one had blundered, that time was being lost, that the police or the soldiers would soon confront them, made itself apparent. A hubbub of voices was now heard where all, an hour before, had been silent, and the presage of dangerous work before them had kept the men grave and dumb. Disintegration was evident. The disgusted safe-robber felt that, and sneered at the futile idiot chosen for this work.

Suddenly a distant honk announced an approaching automobile, another and another—it was coming on fast—the coarse grating alarm sounded now almost among them. The foremost drew back from the roadway, a few wandering in the Lorimer grounds, looking up the shining stairs, slashing at the plants and grumbling aloud, turned back, so that the vehicle passed between two solid files. It stopped; the door of the limousine swung open—a tall, thin man alighted. He ordered the chauffeur to assist him, as he mounted the puffed tire of the wheel, and was pushed upon the roof of the car. He stood up, and by the lucky incidence of light from a distant electric lamp he was revealed. It was the MAYOR.

A long roll of subdued imprecations greeted him, rising with a sudden access of noise into a clamor of shouts, oaths, and yells. It increased, the suppressed impatience and their inaction, the confusion of mind produced by the disappearance of Bomber, some doubt as to their position, and the disquietude of a sense of impending failure, all intensified by their hostility to the man who had vanquished them in an industrial war, merged into an awful expression of hatred. An abstract alarm sharpened into a real rage at a concrete personality, and they stormed forward, filling the highway, surging upon the automobile, while the cries of “Kill him, kill him,” maddened them to violence. They crushed about the wagon, and guns came to their shoulders. Not a missile had been thrown; the passion of the mob vented itself in execrations.

“The Scab,” “He took our bread,” “The Carrara Stool-pigeon,” “Have him down and tear him to bits,” “Rip his glib tongue out,” “To Hell with him: He belongs there.”

The seething tide, in another instant would have overturned the machine. It could not advance. It was wedged in a matrix of solid humanity; that alone saved it from an ignominious upset.

The Mayor had been silent and held his place; his arms were folded, and not a word of expostulation as yet. His attitude both vexed and puzzled the insane mob. For one instant the voices were silenced—it was the prelude to a murderous design—and then came the clear startling words, strangely almost weirdly penetrating; “Yes! You can kill me if you like. The thing is easily done—but you will lose a friend—I beg to tell you you will lose your fight—” The silence continued, the Mayor jumped at the chance and his voice rose higher with that peculiar musical distinctness and charm that Helen Lorimer had noticed when she first saw him in the City Hall.

“What have you got against me? One thing. I did my duty as the Law commanded. I put down your Lawlessness. Could I do anything else? Could you? But is that all I have done? Have I not also restrained the men who would have destroyed you so far as they could? What is your grievance? Are you starved? Are you naked? Are you unsheltered? I know that you are _not_. Labor conditions are not bad here. You are misled. You have been listening to foolish promises, you have followed false leaders. You have let envy take the place of sense. You dream of some sort of a new State. It is called The New Era; no New Era can be well considered that begins with WAR. Unnecessary, cruel, careless, brutal WAR! Any Economic idea that starts with WAR will end with it! It cannot abide. Civil disorder, Civil strife, means one thing—ANARCHY; and anarchy is not a thinkable civil state. You might as well—you who are builders—think that a house can stand which is built out of plumb, out of line—you who are plumbers that you can have health with broken pipes, and empty reservoirs, you who are cloth-makers or hat-makers or workers of any sort, that you can do your labor without tools. You preach SOCIALISM but _society_ comes first, and society is superior to any theory as to how society shall be conducted. I think I understand as well as you do much that can be said for the aims of Socialism, but I understand a great deal better than you do, much that can be said against it. I too have learned things. Are you above learning also? These people,” waving his arm towards the houses of Carrara—“have done you no harm by living. Would you care to live as they do? Hardly. Cannot we take a lesson from Nature—a flat world would be an uninhabitable world—a flat Society—all alike—would be impossible. I will talk this over with you, but not here. IF YOU WILL ARGUE THIS MATTER WITH GUNS, YOU SHALL BE ANSWERED WITH GUNS.”

His voice ceased and the silence was for an instant broken by cries and questions. He had made an impression. The Mayor felt that, and he was eager to take advantage of the favorable opening. He leaned forward—when suddenly the Gun Argument, he had invoked, began somewhere back in the streets toward the Saint George Hill. There was firing—sharp unmistakable firing. All again was disorder, tumult, panic. A terrible cry smote his ears.

“Clear out!—the SOLDIERS—make off!” It was true. The two regiments—the 22d and the 69th—had been partially mustered, and they were forcing their way down the three avenues towards the Kingsbridge Road. And thus unexpectedly, shamelessly, this silver voiced flatterer became to the men in front of him a deceiver—the traitor had kept them there while the troops gathered; his very words “_answered with guns_”, was the signal for this assault. The Mayor realized the awful accusation of this coincidence. He recoiled from it, his face darkened with suffering. Curses reached his ears, and then the whistle of a bullet, and he fell backward on the roof of the car.

An avalanche of men hurled out of the avenues. They were in flight. The firing came closer. Only the rush of feet was heard. Still firing, and the despairing race of men past the motionless Mayor there on the top of the limousine, that, like some slight pebble in a stream, sufficed to divide the tearing unguided current. And yet none of those who passed, bore any evidence of wounds. There were none. The Mayor, in ordering the soldiers had commanded that _dispersal_ not _slaughter_ should first be tried with the rioters. Fear did its perfect work. It was as the Mayor wished, but he had fallen the victim of his own imprudence; in a manner, of his own forbearance.

Soon it was all over; the troops emerged from the streets into the roadway, and the vast throngs, the little army of Bomber, the idle gazers, the haunting lines of free-booters, had EVAPORATED as completely as the patch of water on the flagging succumbs to the dry summer wind that sweeps it into space.

The Mayor was carried into the Lorimer mansion; the soldiers patrolled the streets; the dispossessed returned, lights spread over the deserted ridge, doctors hurried to the side of the City’s executive, Briggs arrived, and, under orders from the Lieutenant Governor, the surplus of the soldiers marched to the east side to assist the police and the firemen, who still fought an uncertain contest with the wily incendiary Putkoff. And in the midst of the mingling confusion of renewed confidence, the bustle of return, the flashing telegrams from all parts of the city, the news of the speeding armaments from Chicago, the resumption of the whirling life of the huge metropolis, stifled into inaction for a few short hours by this flurry of insurrection, Helen Lorimer and Amato and Mr. Moser arrived, and Helen learned all.

Julieta had made her way to the Duncan Keep after her successful encounter with Bomber, and there became incoherent and dizzy with fever. She managed to tell her story, and almost the first thing done when the rehabilitation of the houses began and the colonel of the regiments came on the scene was to open the now famous Butler’s pantry. There indeed sat the raving Bomber. He was pale with frenzy. He leaped at the first man who entered, and only a sharp struggle overcame him. As he passed down the steps of the mansion, handcuffed, he encountered Amato and Helen hurrying upward, but he averted his eyes, and the bitterness of his defeat, the confession of his shallowness and vanity made him writhe with anguish.

Helen had asked for her mother. Julieta had been very carefully conducted back to her home, and lay in her bed yielding to the first vagaries of a disordered mind. Helen stood at her side and leaning over the changed flushed face of the beautiful woman whispered her name, and pressed her lips upon her own. Julieta opened her eyes and her hands feebly closed over the head of her child, holding her in a delirium of joy. But the strained nerves gave way, and she relapsed into a kind of inanition awaking at times to beckon from the air some shape appearing there to her, as she called softly, “Robert, Robert.” Then Helen herself surrendered. The ordeal had been a long one, and this climax of anxiety, with the strange vicissitude of the Mayor’s extremity in her own home, completed the breakdown. Still it was not serious, and nourishment and rest would restore the strong nature to its natural estate.

The Mayor’s condition was critical; life ebbed and returned; the doctors camped at his bedside; skill and art and experience worked hard together to keep him alive, yet sensibly the flagging heart released its control, and the solemn end grew more and more certain. Then it was—the next day in the afternoon—that the dying man asked for Miss Lorimer. He knew where he was, from time to time in the brief intervals, when pain left him, his eyes reviewed the decorated and charming room, dwelling with such a depth of tender interest on all these things that recalled—how pathetically who shall say—the ONE love of his life.

Helen came. The Mayor lay in the room of her uncle—the man who had separated them. It was a luxurious apartment, with every appointment perfect, and its windows opening to the west, in the sinking November day caught the last lights over the russet and gold of the Palisades. The Mayor lay on the bed, with his face turned to the flushing western sky, rent as it were, with seams of gold, as though the purple tapestry of the clouds were torn, and the gateway of the sun’s descent disclosed. Helen stood at the doorway; she had come noiselessly, and waited for her own heart to beat less wildly. A doctor held the Mayor’s wrist, timing the sullenly retreating tide of blood from his young heart; a nurse bent over him. Both happened to hide Miss Lorimer from him.

The doctor turned, the nurse moved away, the Mayor’s eyes fell on the face of the woman who there awaited his summons. It came from those blue eyes whose mystery had first enchanted her. And her own answered them. Slowly she came forward, and sank into the chair the doctor had just deserted. The Mayor looked past her for one moment at his attendants, and a mute entreaty they read in his face, caused them both to withdraw.

“Pardon me, Miss Lorimer,” said the doctor, “I must soon return.” Helen bowed her head, a gesture of the doctor’s summoned the nurse and the two went out together. Helen had taken the dying man’s hand; she held back the struggling tears; his own eyes were strangely soft and winning, the effort of this interview brought again some color to his face—but so very little!—the pitiful remnant of his wasting life—and his voice, that appealing musical voice just retained or recovered its former note. She bent her face close to his as he spake.

“Miss Lorimer,” he began, but this noble girl whispered, “let it be Helen please,” and he smiled, “Helen,—you recall that talk we had in the museum,—your new museum—?”

“Yes,” she quietly responded.

“Well, here in my wandering dreams I have gone over it for hours. You have always been near me, and your voice has sounded to me almost as if it bore to me the music of another World”—his face darkened with the overwhelming torrent of his sadness, but no sobs broke from his lips. The spasm of grief passed, she pressed his hands, she wiped the stricken eyes, she slid softly from her chair, she knelt at his side.

“Helen, I go too with the setting sun—my day is finished—I thank the Everlasting that it passes thus. But let me be clear in your eyes. Your uncle drove me from this house. My pride could not brook his insult. Helen, my love has never ceased, never changed. Death only takes away its earthly dwelling place, and IF—If, as you began to teach me, there is still life THERE”—he pointed feebly to the blazing west—“if there is, there too my love will stay unchanged. Ah! the long day’s task is done, and I must sleep. But Helen you forgive me”—then with an ardor that made the girl before him pale with apprehension that the untoward passion would put out the fluttering flame of life, he added—“Helen have I still your Love?”

The woman bent her face to his; their lips met—a golden light entered the windows, it filled the room; it was so intense and brilliant that objects seemed lost in it; it dazzled as though an etherialized substance suffused the space, blotting out all definite shape, and enthralling all the senses in the captivity of one. It was so for the interval of half a minute, and then again the depleted room was established in the commonplaces of its utilities.

The doctor and the nurse had returned, and behind them came the bowed form of the Mayor’s mother, led by Mr. Briggs. Helen rose and passed to the window, her eyes straining at the spectacle of glory in the clouds. To her catholic heart and nurture it seemed appallingly cold and ruthless, this passage of a soul into the awful futurity, unattended by prayers, unaccompanied by the offices of devotion, with no sensible presentation, still to hold the dissolving corporeal powers fixed in adoration that the soul might more purely, more wisely, pass on to its new appointments, rising on the wings of aspiration.

The strength of a tremendous religious faith was hers, and in that strength her lips repeated the Orison of Help for the dying.

A half-stifled cry, a movement behind her, caused her to turn. The doctor was taking away the stunned mother of the man who had already just made his confession to her ears. Helen passed quickly to her side, took her in her arms, and brought her out of the room, passing through a crowd of men, officers of the city,—state and citizens, and gently made her way to her own chamber, with a tenderness that was itself a ministration of healing to the crushed heart, the hopeless spirit of a Mother.

THE MAYOR WAS DEAD.