II C-10-R (continued 2)

The writing in the body of the document was weak and feeble, the signature was strong and bold. He gathered the papers up loosely.

"Here," he said, "I want you to take them to a newspaper—the Gazette—that will be certain to issue an extra if it is too late for the last edition. I want this letter of his with mine to go side by side with the news. There must not be a moment of uncertainty about it."

"Mr. Meade, for God's sake——"

"Don't stop to argue with me now. Take a taxi and get there as quickly as you can. You are carrying my honor, and my son's reputation. Go."

The old man spoke sharply—imperiously—in such a tone as he rarely used to the other. White as death himself, and greatly shaken, Shurtliff took the papers, folded them up methodically, and hunted for an envelope.

"Don't stay for anything, Shurtliff," repeated Meade, "but go quickly. Stay at the Gazette office until the extra comes out. Bring me one. I'll wait here for you."

Shurtliff did not dare to say anything further. Although thousands of protests rushed to his lips he did not give them utterance. As if it had been an ordinary commission he was charged to execute, he turned and walked out of the room. He paused as he reached the door and looked back. The old engineer sat before his desk, the pen still in his right hand, his left hand clenched and extended across the desk. He sat erect. Something of the dignity and the pride and strength and firmness of the days before had come back to him. He smiled faintly. His old friend closed the door behind him and departed.

XV FOR THE HONOR OF THE FATHER

Two and one-half hours later a group of anxious reporters, clustered at the door of the Uplift Building, were galvanized into life by the arrival of a taxicab. The chauffeur had driven like one possessed. Out of it leaped Bertram Meade. He was recognized instantly.

"At last," said the foremost of them, as he recognized the newcomer. "We'll get something definite now."

"You know about the bridge, Mr. Meade," asked another, striving to force his way through the crowd, which broke into a sudden clamor of questioning.

Meade nodded. He recognized the first speaker, their hands met. This was a man of his own age named Rodney, who had been Meade's classmate at Cambridge, his devoted friend thereafter. Instead of active practice he had chosen to become a writer on scientific subjects and was there as a representative of The Engineering News. There were sympathy and affection in his voice, and look, and in the grasp of his hand.

"Have you seen my father, Rodney?" Meade asked, quickly moving to the elevator, followed by all the men.

"At the house they said he was not there, and here at the office we get no answer."

As Meade turned he saw his father's secretary coming slowly through the entrance.

"There's his secretary," he said. "Shurtliff," he called out.

"Yes, Mr. Meade," said the old man, who was a pitiable spectacle.

For an instant young Meade realized what this would be to Shurtliff.

"My father?"

"I left him in the office two hours ago."

"Had he heard the news?

"It had just come, sir, and——"

"Where have you been?"

"He told me to—to—go away and—and leave him alone. I have been wandering about the streets. My God, Mr. Meade, what is going to become of us?"

Outside in the street the newsboys were shrieking:

"Extry! Extry! All about the collapse of the International Bridge. Two hundred engineers and workmen lost."

Shurtliff had one of the papers in his hand. Meade tore it from him.

"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?" stared at him in big red headlines.

"Gentlemen," said Meade, "I can answer that question"—he held up the paper so that all might see—"the fault—the blame—is mine."

"We'll have to see your father, Bert," said Rodney.

"He can add nothing at all to what I have said, old man."

"He will have to confirm it," said another. "It's too grave a matter to rest on your word alone."

"You can't see my father."

"He is in this building, we know, and he'll never leave it without running the gauntlet of us all," cried another amid a chorus of approval.

Meade realized there was no escape. They all piled into the elevator with him and Shurtliff. They followed him up the corridor. He stopped before the door of the office.

"I forbid you to come in," he said. "This is my father's private office——"

"Have no fear, Bert," said Rodney firmly. "We don't intend to break in. We understand how you feel. We won't cross that threshold unless and until you invite us. But I point out to you that this is a matter of the greatest public concern, that hundreds of lives have been lost, that the whole world is interested, that somebody is to blame. You say that you are, but your father was the chief engineer. His is the responsibility unless it can be shown otherwise."

"If you will give me ten minutes, Rod, I will admit you and all the rest. You can then see my father and you may question him fully."

"Very good, that's perfectly fair," said Rodney. "And I am sure I speak for the others. We will wait here until you say the word and then all we shall want will be a statement from your father."

"Thank you, old man. Come, Shurtliff," said Meade, turning his key in the lock. The two men entered and carefully closed the door behind them.

The door was scarcely shut when Helen Illingworth left the elevator and came rapidly up the corridor. She had called at the office before and had no need to ask the way. The reporters gathered around the door moved to give her passage while they stared at her with deep if respectful curiosity. Many of these men were the iron and steel business reporters. They did not know her, of course, but her beauty, her distinction, and her interest, and even her distress, were evident. The reporters who dealt in social matters would have recognized her at once. Indeed her face was vaguely familiar to some of them because she was a reigning beauty and a belle, and her picture had appeared in different papers many times.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," she began, "but I am very anxious to see the younger Bertram Meade."

"He has just gone into the office," answered Rodney respectfully.

The girl raised her hand to knock.

"A moment, please; perhaps you had better understand the situation. The International Bridge——"

"I know all about it."

"I represent The Engineering News and these other gentlemen various New York papers. Now Meade, Junior, has just assumed the full responsibility for the faulty construction and we are waiting to get confirmation of that from his father. It is a serious matter and——"

The girl came to a sudden determination. She could not declare herself too soon or too publicly.

"My name is Illingworth," she said, and as the hats of the surprised reporters came off, she continued, "I am the daughter of the president of the Martlet Bridge Company, which was erecting the International."

"Yes, Miss Illingworth," answered Rodney, "and did you come here to represent him?"

"I am Mr. Bertram Meade, Junior's, promised wife, and I am here because it is the place where I ought to be. When the man I love is in trouble I must be with him."

Now she raised her hand again, but Rodney was too quick for her. He knocked lightly on the door and then struck it heavily several times. The sound rang hollowly through the corridor as it always does when the door of an empty room is beaten upon. There was no answer for a moment.

"Oh, I must get in," said the woman.

Rodney knocked again and this time the door was opened. Shurtliff stood in the way. He had been white and shaken before, but there are no adjectives to describe his condition now. So anguished and shocked was his appearance that everybody stared. Shurtliff moistened his lips and tried to speak. He could not utter a word, but he did manage to point toward the private office.

"Perhaps I would better go first," said Rodney, as the secretary stepped back to give them passage.

Helen Illingworth followed and then the rest. Young Meade was in the private office into which they all came. He was standing erect by his father's chair. He was pale and strained also, but in his eyes burned the fire of deep determination. The great bulk of the old engineer was slouched down in that chair. His body was bent down over his desk. His head lay on the desk face downward. One great arm, his left, extended shot straight across the desk. His fist was clenched, his right arm hung limp by his side. He was still.

There was something unmistakably terrible in his motionless aspect. They had no need to ask what had happened. A sharp exclamation from the woman, not a scream but a sort of catch of the breath as if to repress an outbreak, was the only sound that broke the silence, as she alone went toward the standing engineer. The men stood there bareheaded while Helen Illingworth passed around Rodney and stepped to her lover's side.

"You can't question my father now, gentlemen," said Meade, who from Meade Junior had suddenly become Meade Only, "he is dead."

In the outer office they heard Shurtliff brokenly calling the doctor on the telephone and asking him to notify the police.

"Did he——" began one hesitatingly.

"He was too big a man to do himself any hurt, I know," answered Meade proudly, as he divined the question. "The autopsy will tell. But I am sure that the failure of the bridge has broken his heart."

"And we can't fix the responsibility now," said Rodney, who for his friend's sake was glad of this consequence of the old man's death.

"Yes, you can," said the young man.

He leaned forward and laid his right hand on his dead father's shoulder. Helen Illingworth had possessed herself of his left hand. She lifted it and held it to her heart. The engineer seemed unconscious of the action and still it was the greatest thing he had ever experienced. Meade spoke slowly and with the most weighty deliberation in an obvious endeavor to give his statement such clear definiteness that no one could mistake it.

"Here in the presence of my dead father," he began, "whose life I have ended and whose career I have ruined, but whose fame shall be unimpaired, I solemnly declare that I alone am responsible for the design of the member that failed. My father was getting along in years. He left a great part of the work to me. He pointed out what he thought was a structural weakness in the trusses, but I overbore his objections. I alone am to blame. The Martlet Bridge Company employed us both. They said they wanted the benefit of my father's long experience and my later training and research."

"Do you realize, Meade," said Rodney, as the pencils of the reporters flew across their pads, "that in assuming this responsibility which, your father being dead, cannot be——"

"I know it means the end of my career," said Meade, forcing himself to speak those words. "My father's reputation is dearer to me than anything on earth."

"Even than I?" whispered the woman.

"Oh, my God!" burst out the man, and then he checked himself and continued with the same monotonous deliberation as before, and with even more emphasis, "I can allow no other interest in life, however great, to prevent me from doing my full duty to my father."

Indeed, as he had been fully resolved to protect his old father's fame had the father survived the shock, the fact that the old man was dead and helpless to defend himself only strengthened his son's determination. The appeal of the dead man was even more powerful than if he had lived. Meade could not glance down at that crushed, broken, impotent figure and fail to respond. It was not so much love—never had he loved Helen Illingworth so much as then—as it was honor. The obligation must be met though his heart broke like his father's; even if it killed him, too.

And the woman! How if it killed her? He could not think of that. He could think of nothing but of that inert body and its demand. He had to lie, even to swear falsely, before God and man if necessary, for him. There was no other possible answer to what Meade, wrongly if you will, but nevertheless unmistakably, conceived to be his father's appeal. He completely misjudged his dead father, to be sure. But that thought did not enter his head. He spoke as he did because he must.

"Have you no witnesses, no evidence to substantiate your extraordinary statement?" asked Rodney.

"I can substantiate it," said Shurtliff, coming into the room, having finished his telephoning. "The doctor and the police will be here immediately, but before they come——" and he drew himself up and faced the reporters boldly. "Gentlemen, I can testify that everything that Mr. Bertram Meade has said is true. I happened to be here when my dead friend and employer got the telegram announcing the failure of the bridge and, although he knew it was his son's fault, he bravely offered to assume the responsibility and he told me to go to the newspapers and tell them that it was his fault and that his son had protested in vain against his design."

"Why didn't you do it?" asked one of the reporters.

"I couldn't, sir," faltered the old man. "It wasn't true. The son there was to blame."

He sank down in his seat and covered his face with his hands and broke into dry, horrible sobs. It was not easy for him either, this shifting of responsibility.

"You see," said young Meade, "I guess that settles the matter. Now you have nothing more to do here."

"Nothing," said Rodney at last, "not in this office at least. We must wait for the doctor, but we can do that outside."

"Rod, will you kindly take charge outside—my father's secretary, you see, is not able to do so—and let no one come in here except the doctor until the police arrive. You have your story?"

"Yes," said Rodney with a great pity for his friend, in whose innocence he somehow continued to believe in spite of what he had said. "We've had a full account of the accident telegraphed from the works and now this completes it."

One by one the men filed out, leaving the dead engineer with his son, the secretary, and the woman in the room.

The iron strain which Meade had put upon himself gave way and not the least part of his breakdown was the consciousness of the lie he had told so bravely and so gallantly to shield his father. And now at last came the realization that he had not only thrown away his own reputation and career, but that he had cast the woman he loved into the discard also. He drew his hand away from her, turned, rested his head on his arm on the top of the low bookcase as if to shut out from his sight what he stood to lose.

"Bert," said the woman, coming closer to him and laying her hand on his shoulder, while he made no effort to turn his head around, "why or how I feel it I cannot tell, but I know in my heart that you are doing this for your father's sake, that what you said was not true. Things you have said to me——"

"Did I ever say anything to you," began Meade in fierce alarm, while Shurtliff started to speak but checked himself, "to lead you to think that I suspected any weakness in the bridge?"

The woman was watching him keenly and listening to him with every sense on the alert. Nothing was escaping her and she detected in his voice a note of sharp alarm and anxiety as if he might have said something which could be used to discredit his assertion now.

"Perhaps not in words but in little things, suggestions," she answered quietly. "I can't put my hand on any of them, I can hardly recall anything, but the impression is there."

Meade smiled miserably at her and again her searching eyes detected relief in his.

"It is your affection that makes you say that," he said, "and as you admit there is really nothing. What I said just now is true."

It was much harder to speak the lie to this clear-eyed woman, who loved him, than to the reporters. He could scarcely complete the sentence, and in the end sought to look away.

"Bertram Meade," said the woman, putting both her hands upon his shoulder, "look me in the face and before God and man, and in the presence of your dead father and remembering I am the woman you love, to whom you have plighted yourself, and tell me that you have spoken the truth and that the blame is yours."

Meade tried his best to return her glance, but those blue eyes plunged through him like steel blades. He did not dream in their softness could be developed such fire. He was speechless. After a moment he looked away. He shut his lips firmly. He could not sustain her glance, but nothing could make him retract or unsay his words.

"I have said it," he managed to get out hoarsely.

"It's brave of you. It's splendid of you," she said. "I won't betray you. I don't have to."

"What do you mean?" asked the man.

But the woman had now turned to Shurtliff. In his turn she also seized him in her emotion and she shook him almost eagerly.

"You, you know that it is not true. Speak!"

But she had not the power over the older man that she had over the younger. The secretary forced himself to look at her. He cared nothing for Miss Illingworth, but he had a passion for the older Meade that matched hers for the younger.

"He has told the truth," he cried almost like a baited animal. "No one is going to ruin the reputation of the man I have served and to whom I have given my life without protest from me. It's his fault, his, his, his!" he cried, his voice rising with every repetition of the pronoun as he pointed at Meade.

Helen Illingworth turned to her lover again. She was quieter now.

"I know that neither of you is telling the truth," she said. "Lying for a great cause, lying in splendid self-sacrifice. You are ruining yourself for your father's name and he is abetting. Why? It can't make any difference to him now. It would not make any difference to him even if you were responsible for the collapse of the bridge. We all make mistakes. My father has made many, and Mr. Curtiss. But it makes a great difference to me. Have you thought of that? I'm going to marry you anyway. All that foolish talk about our marriage depending on the bridge is nothing. I told my father so. He said he'd repudiate me if I came here. But he'll not do that. He'll be terribly angry, but he'll forgive me. Only tell me the truth, Bert. By our love I ask you. If you want me to keep your secret I'll do it. Indeed I'll have to keep it, for I have no evidence yet to prove it false, but if you won't tell me I'll get that evidence, I will find out the truth, and then I shall publish it to the whole world and then——"

"And you would marry me then?" asked Meade, swept away by this profound pleading.

"I will marry you now, instantly, at any time," answered the girl. "Indeed you need me. Guilty or innocent, I am yours and you are mine."

"You don't understand," said Meade. "I am ruined beyond hope. I can't drag you down."

"No," said the girl, "but you can lift me up as high as your heart, and no man can place me in a nobler position."

"Listen," protested the engineer, "nothing will ever relieve me of the blame, of the shame, of the disgrace of this. My life as it has been planned is now wrecked beyond repair. I don't know whether this awful cloud can ever be lifted, whether I can ever be anything again among men. But I am a man. I have youth still, and strength and inspiration. When I can hold up my head among men and when I have won back their respect, it may even be a meed of their admiration, I shall humbly sue for that you now so splendidly offer, but until that time I am nothing to you and you are free."

There was a finality in his tone which the woman recognized. She could as well break it down as batter a stone wall with her naked fist. She looked at him a long time.

"Very well," she said at last, "unless I shall be your wife I shall be the wife of no man. I shall wait confident in the hope that there is a just God, and that He will point out some way."

"And if not?"

"I shall die, when it pleases God, still loving you."

"And being loved," he cried, sweeping her to his heart, "until the end."

XVI THE UNACCEPTED RENUNCIATION

The doctor and the officers of the law now entered the outer office. Reluctantly the woman drew herself away from the man's arms, which were as reluctant to release her. In spite of the brave words that had been spoken by the woman the man could only see a long parting and an uncertain future. He realized it the more when old Colonel Illingworth entered the room in the wake of the others. After he had recovered himself he had hurried to the station in time to catch the next train and had come to New York, realizing at once where his daughter must have gone; besides his presence was needed in New York in view of the catastrophe.

He had brushed by the reporters, refusing to listen to them. Not anticipating what he saw as he entered the private office, the color faded from his face as he became aware of the big, prostrate, inert figure bending over the desk. It came again into his cheeks when he saw his daughter.

"My father is dead," said Meade as the doctor and the officers of the law examined the body of the old man. The son had eyes for no one but the old Colonel. "The failure of the bridge has broken his heart; my failure, I'd better say."

"I understand," said Illingworth. "He is fortunate. I would rather have died than have seen any son of mine forced to confess criminal incompetency like yours."

"Father!" protested Helen Illingworth.

"Helen," said the Colonel sternly, "you have no business to be here. You heard what I said when you left me. But you are my daughter, my only daughter. I was harsh, perhaps, and hasty. I came to fetch you. Are you coming with me or do you go with this man—this incompetent—upon whose head is the blood of the men who went down with the bridge, to say nothing of the terrible material loss?"

"Father," said the girl with a resolution and firmness singularly like his own. "I can't hear you speak this way, and I will not."

"Do you go with him or do you not?" thundered the Colonel.

It was Meade who answered for her.

"She goes with you. I love her and she loves me, but I won't drag her down in my ruin."

"It is he who renounces and not I," said the woman. "I am ready to marry him now if he wishes."

"I do not wish," said the man.

And no one could ever know how hard was the utterance of those simple words.

"I am glad to see honor and decency are in you still," said the Colonel, "even if you are incompetent."

"If you say another word to him I will never go with you as long as I live," flashed out Helen Illingworth.

"I deserve all that he can say. Your duty is with him. Good-by," said Meade.

"And I shall see you again?"

"Of course. Now you must go with your father."

Helen Illingworth turned to the Colonel.

"I shall go with you because he bids me, not because——"

"Whatever the reason," said the old soldier, "you go." He paused a moment, looking from the dead man to the living one. "Meade," he exclaimed at last, "I am sorry for your father, I am sorry for you. Good-by, and I never want to see you or hear of you again. Come, Helen."

The woman stretched out her hand toward her lover as her father took her by the arm. Meade looked at her a moment and then turned away deliberately as if to mark the final severance.

With bent head and beating heart, she followed her father out of the room. There he had to fight off the reporters. He denied that his daughter was going to marry young Meade. She strove to speak and he strove to force her to be quiet. In the end she had her way.

"At Mr. Meade's own request," she said finally, "our engagement has been broken off. Personally I consider myself as much bound as ever. I can say nothing more except to add that my feelings toward Mr. Meade are unchanged. If possible they are enhanced, but in deference to his wishes and to my father's——"

"Have you said enough?" roared the Colonel, losing all control of himself at last. "No, I will not be questioned or interrupted another minute. Come."

He almost dragged the girl from the room.

Within the private office the physician said that everything pointed to a heart lesion, but only an autopsy would absolutely determine it. Meanwhile the law would have to take charge of the body temporarily. It was late at night before Bertram Meade and old Shurtliff were left alone. Carefully seeing that no one was present in the suite of offices Meade turned to Shurtliff.

"You know the combination of the private safe?"

"Yes, sir."

"Open it."

The old man went to the door of the safe and discovered that it was not locked.

"It's open," he said.

"Get me that memorandum I wrote to my father. You know where he kept it."

"Yes, sir, separate from the other papers concerning the International, in the third compartment." He turned the big safe door slowly. The third compartment was empty. "It's gone," he said.

Meade looked at him sharply.

"The plans are there?"

"Yes, sir, in the other compartment just above it."

"Look them over."

"It's not here, sir," answered Shurtliff, making a bluff at going rapidly through the papers.

Meade went to the safe, a small one, and examined it carefully and fruitlessly. His letter was not there with the other papers, where it should have been if it were in existence. It was not anywhere.

"Father told me he was going to destroy it, but from indications he let drop I rather thought that he had changed his mind and was keeping it to have some fun with me when the bridge was completed," he said at last.

"Yes, sir, that was his intention. In fact, I know he did not destroy it at first. He told me to file it with the plans."

"And did you?"

"I did."

"Where is it, then?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Shurtliff, you knew my father better than anyone on earth, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir, and loved him."

"Do you think he is the kind of man who would relieve himself at my expense, or at anybody's?" Meade almost shouted the words at the secretary.

"No, of course not."

"Where is it, then?"

"I don't know, sir. On second thoughts he must have destroyed it later. I haven't looked in this compartment for weeks."

"Well, it couldn't be anywhere but here unless it is in his desk at home. I'll look there and you search the office here. When it is found it must be destroyed. You understand?"

"I understand; trust me, Mr. Meade."

"I'll never forget the lie you told to back me up, Shurtliff. I can see you loved him as much as I."

"No one will ever know the truth from me, sir. You have saved your father's name and fame."

"I couldn't save his life, though."

"No, but what you saved was dearer to him than life itself."

"I think we had better search the office now. I wouldn't have that paper come to life for the world," said Meade.

Shurtliff was the most orderly of men. The care of the old engineer's papers and other arrangements had devolved upon him. The search was soon completed. The letter could not be found, and it never occurred to Meade to search Shurtliff!

"I guess he must have destroyed it," said the young man, "but to be sure I will examine his private papers at home. Good-night. You will be going yourself?"

"In a few minutes, sir."

"Come to me in the morning after the autopsy and we will arrange for the funeral," said the younger man as he left the office.

Shurtliff waited until his footsteps died away in the hall. He waited until he heard the clang of the elevator gate. Even then he was not sure. He got up and in his cat-like way opened the door of the office and peered down the hall. It was empty. He stood in the door waiting, while the night elevator made several trips up and down without pausing at that floor. He sat down at the dead man's desk. From his pocket he drew forth a packet of papers.

There were three of them. The letter the young man had written to his father, with the plan and the last note the old man had written to the papers. Shurtliff had not delivered them. He could not make up his mind to do it. He had correctly forecasted what Bertram would attempt to do. He had not gone near the Gazette office. He had withheld these papers from the press. He had said nothing about them to anyone, in the hope that he and the young man could persuade the father to silence before the irreparable admission became known. And finally a Power greater than he and the son together could exercise had sealed the old man's lips forever.

In his hands the devotee held the fame and the honor of the dead man he had so loved. What that dead man would have had him do he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. He had not done it. He could not do it now. He had disobeyed. He had lied. He had a keen conscience, too, but the devotional habit of a lifetime was not to be altered for any other man. Meade could live it down. Shurtliff had lived down his failure. There would be some way. The young man was alive, he could fight. The old man was dead. The secretary would better destroy the papers.

He struck a match, held it to the two letters and the plan and then, as the paper broke into a tiny flame, he threw the match aside and crumpled it out in his hands. The well-remembered face of the dead man, the recollection of his commands, forbade him. He did not have to give up those papers but he could not destroy them. He put them back into the pocket of his coat and bent his head over the desk, his left arm extended across it and clenched just in the last position of the man he loved. He wished that he could die, too, and follow after, faithful servant and friend that he was—or was he traitor and recreant after all?

XVII THAT WHICH LAY BETWEEN

There were no legal proceedings, of course, that could be brought against the dead engineer or his son, although there were many inquests at the bridge. The cause of the failure was clear. Man cannot be punished in law for honest errors in judgment. It was recognized by everyone, whose opinion was worth considering, that the disaster had resulted from a mistake which any engineer could have made. As a matter of fact there was no experience to guide the designers. There never had been such a bridge before. Certain elements of empiricism had to enter into their calculations. They had made the plan after their best judgment and it had failed. They could be blamed, censured, even vilified as they were in the press, but that was the extent of their punishment; of Bertram Meade's punishment, rather, because Rodney and the other reporters had made much of his assumption of the blame. There might have been a doubt of it, engineers at least might have suspected the truth, but the evidence of Shurtliff put it beyond reasonable doubt. The older Meade escaped lightly. Men could only point out his mistake in committing such responsibilities to so young a man. And his dramatic death in large measure disarmed criticism.

The bitter weight of censure fell entirely upon Bertram Meade. His ruin as an engineer was immediate and absolute. He was the scapegoat. No one had any good to say of him except Rodney, who fought valiantly for his friend and classmate, at least striving to mitigate the censure by pointing out the quick and ready acknowledgment of the error which might have been ascribed to the dead man without fear of contradiction.

An effort was made by competitors and stock speculators to ruin the Martlet Bridge Company. By throwing into the gap their private fortunes to the last dollar and by herculean work on the part of their friends, the directors saved the Martlet Company, although its losses were tremendous and almost insupportable, not only in money, but in prestige and reputation. Colonel Illingworth came out of the struggle older and grayer than ever. He went through the fires in his effort to save the concern which had been the foundation of his fortune and in which he felt a greater interest than in anything else in life save his daughter. He had led his company, his battalion, and finally his regiment, on many a hard-fought field in the War, but no battle had ever been fiercer or called upon him for greater efforts than this. The terrific combat had left him almost broken for a time, and his daughter saw that it was not possible even to mention Bertram Meade to him, then.

She had a great sympathy, as well as a tender affection, for her father. Albeit of a different kind, it was almost as great and abiding as her sympathy and affection for her lover. She had seen Meade only once since that day he had taken her to his heart by the body of his dead father and then put her away.

The funeral of the great engineer had been strictly private. Only his confrères, men who stood high in scientific circles, certain people for whom he had made great and successful designs, a few others whose ties were personal, had been invited to the house for the services. The interment was in the little Connecticut town of Milford, in which the older Meade had been born, and from which he had gone forth as a boy to conquer the world.

Shurtliff, the clergyman, and a few of his father's oldest friends, accompanied the young engineer to the car that was to take them to that village. They rode with him to the quaint old cemetery and stood by while those last words that are said over the greatest and the weakest, over youth and age, over beauty and ugliness, over virtue and shame, over triumph and defeat alike, were uttered, and then at his wish they all went away. They felt deeply for the ruined young engineer, who bade them good-by and stood by the side of the grave with Shurtliff, while the men filled it in. The special car would take the others back to New York. Meade would come later at his own time.

"Shurtliff," said the engineer, after the mound had been heaped up and covered with sods and strewn with flowers and the workmen had gone, "I have left everything I possess in your charge. You have a power of attorney to receive and pay out all moneys; to deposit, invest, and carry on my father's estate. The office is to be closed and the house is to be sold. My will, in which I leave everything to Miss Illingworth, is in your hands. You are empowered to draw from the revenue of the estate your present salary so long as you live. If anything happens to me you will have the will probated and be governed accordingly."

"Mr. Meade," said the old man, and he somehow found himself transferring the affection which he had thought had been buried beneath the sod on that long mound before him, to the younger man. He had loved and served a Meade all his life and he began to see that he could not stop now, nor could he lavish what he had to give merely on a remembrance, "Mr. Meade," he said, "you are not going to do yourself any hurt?"

"If you knew me as well as you knew my father you would not ask the question."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but we seem to be rather alone, you and I, in the world."

"Yes," said Meade.

"Well, forgive your father's old if humble friend, if he asks where you are going and what you intend to do?"

"I don't know where I shall go, or what I shall undertake eventually," said the man. "I'm going to leave everything behind now and try to get a little rest at first. Then, I shall try to make another place for myself in the world, if I can, and I'm going to do it without any of the advantages or disadvantages of the period of my life which ends today."

"And you will keep me advised of your whereabouts?"

"I shall see that you get news of my death if I die, Shurtliff, and if I do anything or become anything——"

"The world will advise me of that, you mean?"

"Perhaps—I don't know. One last injunction: you are not to tell anyone the truth."

"God forbid," said Shurtliff, "we have lied to preserve the honor and fame of him we loved who lies here."

"Don't render our perjuries of non-effect."

"I will not, sir. I haven't found that paper. I guess it was destroyed."

"I presume so. And now, good-by."

"Aren't you coming with me?"

"I want to stay here a little while by myself."

Shurtliff looked at the young man standing so strong and splendid by the grave of his father. He put out his hand. He never condemned himself so much before. He began to wonder if he had pursued the right course. He began to question whether he who lay beneath the sod would approve of his suppression of the truth; of the lie he had told to save the father's fame and honor and to back up the assertion of the son. No, on the whole, Shurtliff did not question that. He knew that if it were possible the older man would rise from his grave to assume the responsibility, to proclaim the younger man innocent. Well, Shurtliff would save his beloved chief in spite of himself.

He released the young man's hand, turned, and walked away. When he reached the road, down which he must go, he stopped and faced about again. Meade was standing where he had been. The old man took off his hat in reverent farewell.

Meade was not left alone. Beyond the hillside where his father had been buried rose a clump of trees. Bushes grew at their feet. A woman—should man be buried without woman's tears?—had stood concealed there waiting. Helen Illingworth had wept over the dreariness, the mournfulness of it all. She had hoped that Meade might stay after the others went and now that he was alone she came to him. She laid her hand upon his arm. He turned and looked at her.

"I knew that you would be here," he said.

"Did you see me?"

"I felt your presence."

"And would that you might feel it always by your side."

The man looked down at the grave.

"That," he said with a wave of his hand, "lies between us, that and the ruined bridge."

"Listen," said the woman. "You are wrecking your life for your father's fame. A man has a right perhaps to do with his own life what he will, but, when he loves a woman and when he has told her so and she has given him her heart, did it ever occur to you that when he wrecks his life he wrecks hers, and has he a right to wreck her life for anyone else?"

"What would you have me do?" asked Meade. "Unsay those words I said? Put the blame on the dead, destroy in a breath that great record of achievement, that vast reputation, the honor of a great name?"

"Ah, but on this side is a woman's heart."

"Oh, my God," said Meade, "this is more than I can bear."

"I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do and you are not in any mood to discuss these things," she said in quick compassion. "Some day you will come back to me."

"If I can ever hold my head up among men, look them straight in the eye because I have enforced their respect, I shall come."

"I shall wait."

"The task before me daunts me. It is beyond human achievement."

"Even for love like mine?"

He stretched out his hands toward her over the grave.

"I don't know," he cried. "I dare not hope."

"With love like ours," she answered, "all things are possible."

"I can't bind you. You must be free."

"I shall be free, free to love you, free to work in my own way. No loyalty"—she pointed down—"to him binds me. My loyalty is all to you."

"But you must consider my wishes."

"No," said the woman boldly. "Have you considered mine?"

"It is just," he said slowly, turning his head. "You are breaking my heart, but I shall live and fight on for love and you."

"God bless you."

"You are going away?" she asked at last.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"You will write to me?"

He shook his head.

"I must break with everything. I must give you your chance of freedom."

"Very well," said the woman. "Now hear me. You can't go so far on this earth or hide yourself away so cunningly but that I can find you and maybe follow you. And I will. Now, I must go. I left my car down the road yonder. Will you go with me?"

The man shook his head and knelt down before her suddenly and caught her skirt in his grasp. His arms swept around her knees. She yielded one hand to the pressure of his lips and laid the other upon his head.

"Go now," he whispered, "for God's sake. If I look at you I must follow."

She was great enough to heed his request, to understand his mood, and as the old secretary had done she walked across the grass and down the road. Her last long glimpse of him was of a bent figure bowed over a new-made grave on a wind-swept hill.