chronically frightened, and a very beautiful girl who
did not. The scared woman was Madame La Martine; the unscared girl
passed for their daughter, but about the daughter no one asked questions
of Pierre. About the Blue Goose, its bar, and its gaming-tables Pierre
was eloquent, even with strangers. About his daughter and other things
his acquaintances had learned to keep silence; as for strangers, they
soon learned.

Obviously the mission of the Blue Goose was to entertain; with the
multitude this mission passed current at its face value, but there were
a few who challenged it. Now and then a grocer or a butcher made gloomy
comments as he watched a growing accumulation of books that would not
prove attractive to the most confirmed bibliophile. Men went to the Blue
Goose with much money, but came out with none, for the bar and roulette
required cash settlements. Their wives went in to grocers and butchers
with no money but persuasive tongues, and came forth laden with spoils.

Pandora could raise no taxes for schools, so there were none. Preachers
came and offered their wares without money and without price, but there
were no churches. For the wares of the preachers flushed no faces and
burned no throats, nor were there rattles even in contribution boxes,
and there was no whirr of painted wheels. Even the hundred rumbling
stamps of the Rainbow mill might as well have pounded empty air or
clashed their hard steel shoes on their hard steel dies for all the
profit that came to the far-away stockholders of the great Rainbow mine
and mill.

So it came to pass that many apparently unrelated facts were gathered
together by the diligent but unprosperous, and, being thus gathered,
pointed to a very inevitable conclusion. Nothing and no one was
prosperous, save Pierre and his gorgeous Blue Goose. For Pierre was a
power in the land. He feared neither God nor the devil. The devil was
the bogie-man of the priest. As for God, who ever saw him? But of some
men Pierre had much fear, and among the same was "the hol' man" at the
mill.

CHAPTER II

_The Old Man_

After leaving the Blue Goose Luna went straight to the superintendent's
office. He was nettled rather than worried by Pierre's cautions. Worry
implied doubt of his own wisdom, as well as fear of the old man.
Superintendents had come to, and departed from, the Rainbow. Defiant
fanfares had heralded their coming, confusion had reigned during their
sojourn, their depa