HE reputation of Peter Sanders, as he himself bitterly surmised, was infamous. He was not in the way of knowing, to be sure, how many preachers, within the past four years, had taken his nefarious career to point the moral of sermons; and he suspected only vaguely that he was held in admiring dishonor, east and west, as the boldest and wickedest gambler in America. Had he read the newspapers, which he did but seldom, he might have been aware of the number of lives he had blasted. As it was, his long-cultivated distaste for the meaningless scurry of current events had grown to a violent repugnance through seeing his name vilified in the public prints. He knew that he was a pariah; and that was more than enough, for he loved the society of his kind.

He had been hounded from his own house by an over-active district attorney; he had been compelled to quit business operations at all points and to content himself with the modest fortune (not more than a million and a half of productive investments, as he reflected morosely) that he had acquired. He was in the prime of life still, and he resented his enforced inactivity. He realized that only the forbearance, the very politic forbearance, of the officers of the law, who preferred to stop a public scandal quietly rather than probe it in the view of the world, stood between himself and a term of years with shaven head and striped clothing. He was not grateful, however. He regarded himself as the victim of stupid laws; and he cursed the district attorney as a loud-mouthed, hypocritical tyrant, serving up the head of a peaceable man of business to please young Democracy, who danced with mincing steps but was not a very proper young person, after all.

Worse than his retirement from affairs was his exile. If he could have lived, even solitary, in his own house, life would have VOL. L.-42

been supportable. There he had rows upon rows of books, two great rooms full of them, which he had gathered with industry and intelligence through the years. He had read them, too, as time permitted, intending, as soon as he should be released from business cares, to follow up certain lines of antiquarian research that interested him extremely. He had intended to find out all that could be learned of one or two obscure medieval figures whom he had stumbled upon: Walter Map of Oxford, for example, and a very shadowy person called Goliardus. Their temper suited him. He had gathered books to these ends as well as for rarity and beauty of workmanship; and he had eked out the inadequacy of his early training in Latin by pretty steady reading of the classics, particularly, in these later years, of the satirists, whom he had come to love. Now, in his leisure enforced, he would have been very glad to spend his days among his books, with no living companionship save of a few trusted friends who for old time's sake would not have minded the loneliness of the once feverishly gay house. They would have made nothing of his passion for the Middle Ages, to be sure, but they would have formed a charming circle, full of reminiscence and yet tactful of reference, for a quiet bachelor dinner.

But the books stood gathering dust on the shelves, and the friends could not meet. Mr. Sanders had received the most positive assurances from the district attorney that any move to occupy the house during his term of office would be regarded as a breach of the truce. Prosecution would begin at once; and the end of a trial, as the laws stood, was not doubtful. So the house had remained empty since the day it had been closed as what the preachers amiably called a "gambling hell." Mr. Sanders was an exile from home. Moreover, he did not dare take another house, either in New York or in any other large town, for that would at once have aroused suspicion and subjected him to annoyance. Hotels

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were impossible. The reporters gathered like bees as soon as he registered his name, and no management, he well knew, would regard him with favor as a permanent guest in any set of rooms large enough to suit his exacting tastes. He might have bought a place in the country, to be sure, but he would have had to live in it quite alone. By his soberer neighbors he would have been shunned, while any entertainment of gilded youth or giddy seniors would probably have resulted in a "raid." The prospect was not alluring.

Life at home was impracticable; life abroad proved impossible. He could buy books, and he did so, but he could ship them only to a storage warehouse. Save for his faithful Henry, a personal attendant of tried devotion, he was without companionship. Besides, though he might be an outcast, some simplicity of heart made him abhor the thought of being an expatriate. At Monte Carlo he had been surprised by a couple of his compatriots while repeating audibly:

"Lives there a man with soul so dead-"

Evidently they had recognized the mephistophelian Sanders, for they sniggered as they passed.

That unfortunate encounter had been the end. He determined to break from his isolation, to go where he would be unknown, and to be himself rather than a figure of public scorn. Three weeks later, at the Twenty-third Street Ferry in New York, he changed his name from Peter Sanders to Paul Silcox. The identity of initials was a happy thought of Henry's to avoid the necessity of purchasing new trunks. Sufficiently provided with funds for the needs of many months, and accompanied always by Henry, he entered a stateroom on a south-bound express and arrived the following night at an unfashionable town in the heart of Florida, a free but suspicious man.

In Orlando the newly arrived Mr. Silcox soon found himself a figure of importance, but not of notoriety. As the occupant of the best rooms in a well-conducted, quiet hotel and the only resident of the hostelry with a man-servant, he became the centre of interest for the gregarious circle of guests. By his unassuming affability he promptly won their liking and gained their confi

dence. Persons of simple tastes and ample but not extraordinary incomes, who for reasons of health or idleness had sought this region of orange groves and lakes among the pines, they regarded the newcomer as a most satisfactory addition to their number. They even boasted a little about him to their acquaintances in other small hotels that had no guest with a manservant. To drivers of motor-cars and other purveyors of comfort Henry gave out discreetly that his master was a New Yorker, who had been in the banking business and had retired early in pursuance of his desire for cultivated leisure. Mr. Silcox, reserved but never taciturn, filled without difficulty the part created for him by his valet. It required little acting. Within a fortnight he basked in the sunshine of popularity and esteem. He had enjoyed a confidential chat with the mayor of the town, and, as a Northerner of wealth, he had been offered the chance to buy two orange groves.

One sunlit morning in mid-January Mr. Silcox was sitting on the eastern veranda of the hotel, reading Juvenal and making mordant reflections upon life.

"They're a pack of fools," he murmured inaudibly, "and I'm a bigger fool than any of them. They would cry with fright, I suppose, if they knew that Peter Sanders was about, damn them! But they're a good sort. I like them, yes; and they treat Paul Silcox just as well as they would a successful manufacturer of chewing-gum. They're nice people, and it's a shame to take them in. But I'm just the same, whether I'm Paul Silcox or not. I'm perfectly fit for Sunday-school, and I always knew it. It's nothing but damnable hypocrisy that got me into trouble. Hypocrisy!"

He gazed across a stretch of dusty grass to a thicket of palmetto trees, pursing up his heavy lips to relieve the agitation of his mind. Except for this slight movement, he presented a figure of somnolent ease as he thrust out his fat legs from the depths of a gayly cushioned willow chair. His flannels of spotless white gave no better evidence, one would have said, as to the care bestowed on his body, than his round, wellshaven face to a conscience free from reproach. What lurked behind the drooping eyelids no observer could well have made out, save that a sudden light sometimes

flashed there. He lifted his eyes now, momentarily, as he heard steps behind him. "Ah, good-morning, Mr. Silcox, goodmorning. I trust that we're not intruding." At the greeting Mr. Silcox turned his head and made the preliminary wriggle essential to quitting his deep chair. "Goodmorning, Dr. Henderson, good-" he began at the same instant.

"Don't, I beg of you, don't rise," said the elderly clergyman, who now stood with out-stretched hand in front of the chair. "Don't let us disturb you, don't. Eh-allow me to introduce to you my friend Mr. Clapp, Mr. Silcox." He indicated by a slight turn of the head a tall young man in blue serge who stood beside him.

Mr. Silcox shook hands gravely with Dr. Henderson, who was said to be the rector of a large church in New England, now enjoying a midwinter holiday to prepare himself for the severe labors of the Lenten season; and he transferred his hand uncomplainingly to the strong grasp of his new acquaintance.

"Very glad to meet you, Mr. Clapp," he said cordially. "A warm morning, Doctor! I've been too languid to stir. Do sit down, both of you. Let me pull up some chairs."

With a desperate struggle he got on his legs, only to find that the young man was already placing two chairs beside his own. Not to be unemployed, and pathetically grateful for company, as always, he suggested that lemonade would be refreshing. "You are very kind, very kind," responded Dr. Henderson; "that would indeed be delightful."

"Thanks very much," said young Mr. Clapp, fanning himself with his straw hat and brushing back his curly light hair with his hand.

"Pardon me for one moment," said Mr. Silcox. "I'll just step in and speak to my man."

Mr. Clapp looked inquiringly after their host as he disappeared. "Have you known Mr. Mr. Silcox long, uncle?" he asked. "Oh-ah, I met him last week, last week, Gresham. Why do you inquire?" "Oh, pure, habit. Looks a bit like a fellow I used to know," remarked the young man, eying with some surprise the copy of Juvenal on the arm of Mr. Silcox's chair. Queer likeness, that's all."

"Not an uncommon type of face," remarked the clergyman, "but a very delightful and intelligent gentleman. Mr. Silcox has lived much abroad, he tells me. Most of us have-eh-forgotten our classics." At this point their host returned, and all three seated themselves to await the arrival of the lemonade.

"Mr. Clapp," explained Dr. Henderson, "is the son of an old and very dear friend of mine, Jonas Clapp, of Chicago. You may have met him in the-eh-business world? In any case, you will know his name as a merchant prince. A wonderful man, Mr. Silcox, 'not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.'

"Oh, come, Uncle Joseph!" interrupted Gresham Clapp, fidgeting slightly with the discomfort of the young at hearing their parents taken seriously. "Dad's all right, but he's no Bible character."

"My dear Gresham," returned Dr. Henderson in mild reproof, "perhaps I am quite as good a judge of that as you: I have, presumably, a closer acquaintance with the Word of God, and I knew your father a long while before you were born."

Young Mr. Clapp burst into a generous laugh, in which Mr. Silcox joined tentatively. The conversation seemed likely to stray into regions whither he seldom had ventured.

"Your father's name is, of course, perfectly familiar to me, sir," he began, "and"

"It would be fairly hard to get into Chicago without seeing it," said the young man, still smiling.

"A most remarkable extension of business, most remarkable!" murmured the clergyman. "Mr. Clapp," he went on, turning to Mr. Silcox, "arrived only this morning, and was good enough to come to see me at once. He tells me that he has been exploring the Everglades, and he has stopped at Orlando on his way northward to look after certain business interests for his father."

"Oh, nothing important!" protested the new arrival. "Just a few things that Son couldn't possibly go wrong in, you know."

"Did you find the Everglades an interesting region?" asked Mr. Silcox politely. "Ah, the-lemonade."

Henry, imperturbable and seemingly oblivious to everything but the dexterous

management of a small silver tray, served Dr. Henderson first. As he stood looking down on Mr. Clapp, he allowed one eyelid to flicker. He glanced hurriedly at his master and resumed his stolidity of expression without delay. Beatific content overspread Mr. Silcox's face. Gresham Clapp, on his part, appeared to find something in the servant's masked features that interested him. From the moment of Henry's approach, he watched the man's automatic movements as if fascinated.

"Jove! but it's good to look at a civilized servant again," he remarked, as if to justify his perhaps observable interest, when Henry had withdrawn beyond earshot. "The hotels where I've been stayingwell, their notion of elegance was to keep the chickens out of the dining-room during meal hours."

The talk thereupon drifted into harmless comment upon the deficiencies of hostelries in various parts of the world. Dr. Henderson knew the politer sections of Europe and the regions beloved of pleasureseekers, north and south; Gresham Clapp had roughed it for a year in the West; while Mr. Silcox contributed eclectic information gathered at home and abroad. He forgot to be cynical in his enjoyment of the oddly sorted friends. To the openhearted breeziness of the younger man he responded with a gayety that was wholly delightful. Never before, it seemed to him, had he met a youth of this type, at least not on the same terms. Possibly, he reflected in a submerged train of thought that kept pace with the actual conversation, he had been too warily critical of the youngsters who came to his house in the old days. But they had seemed to him, and they seemed to him still, a pack of brainless idiots whose money would be better placed anywhere than in their own pockets. This Clapp was different: straight of mind as of figure, sensitive to the impacts of life clearly enough, and capable of defending his own. Mr. Silcox was a little amused by his sudden impulse to friendliness, but he was by no means inclined to resist it.

He was surprised at the swift approach of the luncheon-hour, and he gladly forsook his solitary table in order to continue his conversation with Mr. Clapp, who was staying on with Dr. Henderson till afternoon. Luncheon ended, they joined a

group of ladies and gentlemen who were paying a leisurely visit to a young and anæmic alligator in a basin across the stretch of lawn. Mr. Silcox relapsed for a moment into the mood habitual with him when he noted that every one not already known to every one else was delighted, or at least pleased, to make the acquaintance; but he pulled himself up with the reflection that he himself liked to be absorbed thus in the company. He noted also that the consideration paid to Gresham Clapp seemed to be due quite as much to his sponsors as to his youthful charm. And he himself, Peter Sanders really, was treated with the same deference as Dr. Henderson. A delicate reference to the boy's muchadvertised father started the conversation in familiar channels as they returned to the veranda. The entire circle seemed to have become fast friends, and they forsook reserve. They chattered trivially of important things, importantly of trivial things-talk in which the amiable Mr. Silcox's soul delighted, even while it revolted him. For the sake of being one with them he could equably endure the descent into empty-headed dulness, which they appeared to love. To be warmed by their appreciative esteem he would huddle with them in the hovels of gossip. They were, after all, the world. Before young Mr. Clapp's departure to go about his business, Mr. Silcox had invited him, along with Dr. Henderson, to make an expedition on the following day to the renowned sulphur springs.

"Henry," he said later, while preparing for his early dinner, "I want you to go over to Smith's and order a motor for me at halfpast nine to-morrow morning. I'm taking a couple of friends with me to the sulphur springs they talk so much about, and we shall be gone for lunch, so please have some baskets of things ready."

"Yes, sir. But-beg pardon for my asking, Mr. Sanders

"Silcox! Silcox! Henry. Do be careful." "Mr. Silcox, I beg pardon, sir. But do you mind my asking if they are the gentlemen that were with you this morning, sir?"

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact, they are. But what of that? Didn't you like their looks, Henry? Eminently respectable gentlemen, I assure you, who won't corrupt my morals."