thless entrance during the conversation, and felt it to be the
psychological moment to give vent to the news with which he was bursting.

"Is that straight?" Mr. Billings demanded. He wished he had done it
himself. "Is that straight?" he repeated, but Austen had gone.

"Of course it's straight," said Jimmy Towle, vigorously. A shrewd
observer of human nature, he had little respect for Senator Billings.
"Ned Johnson saw him pick himself up at the foot of Austen's stairway."

The Honourable Brush's agate eyes caught the light, and he addressed Mr.
Billings in a voice which, by dint of long training, only carried a few
feet.

"There's the man the Northeastern's got to look out for," he said. "The
Humphrey Crewes don't count. But if Austen Vane ever gets started,
there'll be trouble. Old man Flint's got some such idea as that, too. I
overheard him givin' it to old Hilary once, up at Fairview, and Hilary
said he couldn't control him. I guess nobody else can control him. I wish
I'd seen him kick Ham downstairs."

"I'd like to kick him downstairs," said Mr. Billings, savagely biting off
another cigar.

"I guess you hadn't better try it, Nat," said Mr. Bascom.

Meanwhile Austen had returned to his own office, and shut the door. His
luncheon hour came and went, and still he sat by the open window gazing
out across the teeming plain, and up the green valley whence the Blue
came singing from the highlands. In spirit he followed the water to
Leith, and beyond, where it swung in a wide circle and hurried between
wondrous hills like those in the backgrounds of the old Italians: hills
of close-cropped pastures, dotted with shapely sentinel oaks and maples
which cast sharp, rounded shadows on the slopes at noonday; with thin
fantastic elms on the gentle sky-lines, and forests massed here and
there--silent, impenetrable hills from a story-book of a land of mystery.
The river coursed between them on its rocky bed, flinging its myriad gems
to the sun. This was the Vale of the Blue, and she had touched it with
meaning for him, and gone.

He drew from his coat a worn pocket-book, and from the pocket-book a
letter. It was dated in New York in February, and though he knew it by
heart he found a strange solace in the pain which it gave him to reread
it. He stared at the monogram on the paper, which seemed so emblematic of
her; for he had often reflected that her things--even such minute
insignia as this--belonged to her. She impressed