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THE PRICE

BY

FRANCIS LYNDE

AUTHOR OF
THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN, ETC.

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Published by Arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons


COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published May, 1911

[Illustration]


To

MR. LATHROP BROCKWAY BULLENE

SOLE FRIEND OF MY BOYHOOD, WHO WILL RECALL BETTER
THAN ANY THE YOUTHFUL MORAL AND SOCIAL SEED-TIME
WHICH HAS LED TO THIS LATER HARVESTING OF CONCLUSION,
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                PAGE

      I. AT CHAUDIERE'S                   1

     II. SPINDRIFT                        9

    III. THE RIGHT OF MIGHT              16

     IV. _IO TRIUMPHE!_                  26

      V. THE _BELLE JULIE_               34

     VI. THE DECK-HAND                   44

    VII. GOLD OF TOLOSA                  53

   VIII. THE CHAIN-GANG                  59

     IX. THE MIDDLE WATCH                68

      X. QUICKSANDS                      75

     XI. THE ANARCHIST                   84

    XII. MOSES ICHTHYOPHAGUS             94

   XIII. GRISWOLD EMERGENT              110

    XIV. PHILISTIA                      116

     XV. THE GOTHS AND VANDALS          126

    XVI. GOOD SAMARITANS                143

   XVII. GROPINGS                       154

  XVIII. THE ZWEIBUND                   165

    XIX. LOSS AND GAIN                  175

     XX. THE CONVALESCENT               187

    XXI. BROFFIN'S EQUATION             201

   XXII. IN THE BURGLAR-PROOF           218

  XXIII. CONVERGING ROADS               234

   XXIV. THE FORWARD LIGHT              248

    XXV. THE BRIDGE OF JEHENNAM         260

   XXVI. PITFALLS                       274

  XXVII. IN THE SHADOWS                 286

 XXVIII. BROKEN LINKS                   295

   XXIX. ALL THAT A MAN HATH            312

    XXX. THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES        332

   XXXI. NARROWING WALLS                347

  XXXII. THE LION'S SHARE               354

 XXXIII. GATES OF BRASS                 368

  XXXIV. THE ABYSS                      375

   XXXV. MARGERY'S ANSWER               384

  XXXVI. THE GRAY WOLF                  396

 XXXVII. THE QUALITY OF MERCY           408

XXXVIII. THE PENDULUM-SWING             416

  XXXIX. DUST AND ASHES                 428

     XL. APPLES OF ISTAKHAR             438

    XLI. THE DESERT AND THE SOWN        448




THE PRICE

I

AT CHAUDIERE'S


In the days when New Orleans still claimed distinction as the only
American city without trolleys, sky-scrapers, or fast trains--was it
yesterday? or the day before?--there was a dingy, cobwebbed cafe in an
arcade off Camp Street which was well-beloved of newspaperdom;
particularly of that wing of the force whose activities begin late and
end in the small hours.

"Chaudiere's," it was called, though I know not if that were the name of
the round-faced, round-bodied little Marseillais who took toll at the
desk. But all men knew the fame of its gumbo and its stuffed crabs, and
that its claret was neither very bad nor very dear. And if the walls
were dingy and the odors from the grille pungent and penetrating at
times, there went with the white-sanded floor, and the marble-topped
tables for two, an Old-World air of recreative comfort which is rarer
now, even in New Orleans, than it was yesterday or the day before.

It was at Chaudiere's that Griswold had eaten his first breakfast in the
Crescent City; and it was at Chaudiere's again that he was sharing a
farewell supper with Bainbridge, of the _Louisianian_. Six weeks lay
between that and this; forty-odd days of discouragement and failure
superadded upon other similar days and weeks and months. The breakfast,
he remembered, had been garnished with certain green sprigs of hope; but
at the supper-table he ate like a barbarian in arrears to his appetite
and the garnishings were the bitter herbs of humiliation and defeat.

Without meaning to, Bainbridge had been strewing the path with fresh
thorns for the defeated one. He had just been billeted for a run down
the Central American coast to write up the banana trade for his paper,
and he was boyishly jubilant over the assignment, which promised to be a
zestful pleasure trip. Chancing upon Griswold in the first flush of his
elation, he had dragged the New Yorker around to Chaudiere's to play
second knife and fork at a small parting feast. Not that it had required
much persuasion. Griswold had fasted for twenty-four hours, and he would
have broken bread thankfully with an enemy. And if Bainbridge were not a
friend in a purist's definition of the term, he was at least a friendly
acquaintance.

Until the twenty-four-hour fast was in some measure atoned for, the
burden of the table-talk fell upon Bainbridge, who lifted and carried it
generously on the strength of his windfall. But no topic can be
immortal; and when the vacation under pay had been threshed out in all
its anticipatory details it occurred to the host that his guest was less
than usually responsive; a fault not to be lightly condoned under the
joyous circumstances. Wherefore he protested.

"What's the matter with you to-night, Kenneth, old man? You're more than
commonly grumpy, it seems to me; and that's needless."

Griswold took the last roll from the joint bread-plate and buttered it
methodically.

"Am I?" he said. "Perhaps it is because I am more than commonly hungry.
But go on with your joy-talk: I'm listening."

"That's comforting, as far as it goes; but I should think you might say
something a little less carefully polarized. You don't have a chance to
congratulate lucky people every day."

Griswold looked up with a smile that was almost ill-natured, and quoted
cynically: "'Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that
which he hath.'"

Bainbridge's laugh was tolerant enough to take the edge from his retort.

"That's a pretty thing to fling at a man who never knifed you or
pistoled you or tried to poison you! An innocent by-stander might say
you envied me."

"I do," rejoined Griswold gravely. "I envy any man who can earn enough
money to pay for three meals a day and a place to sleep in."

"Oh, cat's foot!--anybody can do that," asserted Bainbridge, with the
air of one to whom the struggle for existence has been a mere athlete's
practice run.

"I know; that is your theory. But the facts disprove it. I can't, for
one."

"Oh, yes, you could, if you'd side-track some of your own theories and
come down to sawing wood like the rest of us. But you won't do that."

Griswold was a fair man, with reddish hair and beard and the quick and
sensitive skin of the type. A red flush of anger crept up under the
closely cropped beard, and his eyes were bright.

"That is not true, and you know it, Bainbridge," he contradicted,
speaking slowly lest his temper should break bounds. "Is it my fault, or
only my misfortune, that I can do nothing but write books for which I
can't find a publisher? Or that the work of a hack-writer is quite as
impossible for me as mine is for him?"

Bainbridge scoffed openly; but he was good-natured enough to make amends
when he saw that Griswold was moved.

"I take it all back," he said. "I suppose the book-chicken has come home
again