a notion that she's going to lean before the walls are up. Perhaps that's where the Times got it."

"Damn their notions!" said Larrabee shortly. "Now Rankin, put that through tomorrow, and we won't forget you. If you think there's trouble ahead, come to me first and say so. I'm not doing anything foolish if I know it, but I think she's all right."

Larrabee was still up when his son returned. At the sound of the key in the latch he laid down the trade journal he had been reading.

"Hello, dad; you up?"
"M'm, been busy."

The young man threw his hat and coat at one chair, stretched himself in another, and took the cigar his father shoved toward him. He was a well set up youngster, with pleasant gray eyes which came from his mother's side, and a strong chin which marked him the son of his father. That was the only resemblance that outsiders ever no. ticed between Larrabee and his son. It might develop later, but the advantages which Larrabee's money had bought for the boy had given him something that the father could never buy for himself. When Larrabee wore a "dress suit" it looked hired; it struck him that the boy looked as though he had grown into his.

"Dad, do you mind if I desert you for a few days?"

"Do as you please," Larrabee grunted briefly. "I want you to have a good time."

"It's a wedding," the boy explained. "Billy Cummings-he's Gordon's cousin, you know, and graduated last yearBilly's engaged to a girl out in Chicago, and the wedding comes off Thursday. I hadn't intended going, but the boys got at me tonight, and I promised. There will be quite a party of us going from here, and we'll have a big time."

Larrabee swelled with that silent pride as he listened. Old Gordon's boy

was his boy's classmate; the other names he mentioned were of the same social altitude, and they were begging Frank to go with them. His boy was as good as any of 'em, and better. He could buy 'em all out some day, body and soul.

The son talked on contentedly. It seemed odd to him that his father should enjoy these details of his doings, but since he did, there was no harm in telling them. Perhaps some day Larrabee's boy would be ashamed of his father, or-college democracy pastwould be dropped by these friends of another life and come to live contentedly enough on the father's plane, but just at present he was simply a healthy, good-looking youngster with a likable way about him and only the normal amount of iniquity in his system, and he was content to take the good things that the world offered without asking why.

"The Gordons gave a dinner tonight to Billy and all the men of our class who are in town for the holiday. That's where I was. Stag? No, mixed. I met Tom's sister; she's awfully fine." He arose and slowly gathered up his belongings. "She's going with the party tomorrow, and Mrs. Gordon chaperons it. Tom has a splendid mother, and she's mighty kind to all his friends. Well, good-night. See you tomorrow morning. We take the 2:20, and I'll get back in time for another day home before vacation ends."

ets.

His father was fumbling in his pock

"You'll need money," he suggested. "I left my check-book at the office, but let me know what you want and I'll leave it there for you. I may be gone when you get down."

It was his way of expressing approval. For a long time after Frank left him he sat there and smoked, deliberating the boy's future. Next year he would take him into the business, or start him out on a venture of his own. And in a few years more.

It happened about two o'clock the next day, one of those windy, violent days when winter grudgingly gives way to spring, fighting to the last inch for supremacy. Larrabee's clerk answered the telephone call which announced it, and his eyes rounded in dismay. No, Mr. Larrabee was out of town. He had an appointment with an architect over in Jersey-no, he hadn't said where, but he would be back by four.

The clerk hung up and began to fidget around the room. He looked worried. Then he hunted up a time table, looked it over and fidgeted again. Twice he started to put on his overcoat, and took it off. He dared not leave the office now-Larrabee might come in. He went to the telephone and called again for news. It was bad. He ventured to say what was troubling him. No, they knew nothing about it, but they should not be surprised.

It was nearly four when Larrabee came. He had secured his contract, and he was brisk and contented. At the sight of the clerk's perturbed face and the overcoat lying in a heap on the desk

his brows went up.

"What's wrong?"

"Hurry up!" he snapped. What was the fool stuttering about?

"Your son came in for the letter you left. I'm afraid-al least, he said he must hurry, for he had to catch a train and was to stop for a friend who was staying at the Berwick. That was twenty minutes of two, and—” Larrabee glared at him from the doorway. He clenched his fist, half raised it.

"You lie," he said thickly.

The fire was out when Larrabee arrived. The Berwick was two ragged walls above ground and a steaming chaos below. Morrison's new "scraper," a tall steel skeleton the day before, was now a twisted, bewildering heap of scrap. Men were working on the ruins already, where they could. An engine was playing on the hot embers of the hotel, and firemen were venturing wherever a beam would hold, but most of the injured-or dead-were down in that smouldering pit and might not yet be reached.

The danger zone was roped off, policemen guarding it, and ambulances stood lined up in readiness. Around the place on on three sides the crowd

"Well, well, out with it! Lord, man, it won't get any better by keeping!" "The new building-Morrison's-it collapsed about two o'clock."

"Hell!"

Larrabee's wrath exploded in one word. His brows went together, his lips tightened. He jerked his head for the man to go on.

"I got it over the 'phone. She fell to the left and crushed that side of the Berwick, and the hotel took fire. It's under control now, but-Mr. Larrabee!"

Larrabee was going for the door, and he looked impatiently over his should

er.

single line of rope and bulky statues in blue. Now and then a cry went up as some one guessed at a friend or kindred in the ruins and struggled to get near. er. Larrabee went inside the inclosure; Building Inspector Rankin had just been admitted.

"Hello-you here!"

The satellite smiled deprecatingly. He was uneasy, but Larrabee could help him out if he wished.

"Well, I thought I might get a line on something. It's pretty bad, isn't it?"

"Sure!" Larrabee grunted impatiently-he did not like people to waste words over the obvious. "Some of these trouble-hunters would like to scare me,'

he added harshly, scowling at the smoking debris. "I've had two or three fools tell me my boy was in the Berwick, but he wasn't. He took the 2:20 for Chicago."

He said it again, five minutes later, to one of the policemen holding back the crowd. He caught furtive looks from those who knew his face, and it rasped him to dull irritation.

The crowd surged, craned its neck and went into an expectant hush. A group of workers had concentrated suddenly in one spot and were delving fast, yet with delicate care. They brought up something limp and red stained, with hung arms and dragging legs, and a stretcher from the nearest ambulance was raced over the precarious footing of fallen masonry and twisted steel. It was one of the workmen, alive, for he groaned faintly as they brought him down. The ropes parted to let him out, closed again, and the diminishing clang of the ambulance pounded into Larrabee's brain.

"I've sent a telegram after my boy." he said in Rankin's ear, "but he won't get it before tomorrow."

"That's a good idea." Rankin nodded and moved off uneasily. He wanted to get away from the restless crowd and Larrabee's parrot repetition about his son, and he ducked under the rope and went home. Tomorrow would have its own reckoning, but Larrabee could see him through.

At the edge of the crowd an old woman, gray-uaired and frowzed in her strident grief, leveled a thin finger at the contractor.

"That's him! That's Larrabee!" she shrilled across the inclosure. "Where's my Johnny, him as worked for ye? Ye sent him in that hole to work, didn't ye? Now bring him out again.”

The accusing finger coiled into a threatening fist; she leaned far over and shrieked hideous revilement at him and his building; broke into sobs again, and went limp and gasping. The voice

of the crowd swelled into a hoarse murmur. They held him culpable, him, Larrabee! It was the damned intrusive folly of that paper-lies, lies, all lies! It was the blasting, the wind. Didn't he know how to put up buildings? He spoke to the officer nearest him, without moving his head.

"Keep tabs on the hospitals that take the workmen. That's up to me."

Another body came down, still another, this one a woman, a charred rag of humanity from the hotel. The mur. mur of the crowd surged after each one. Larrabee leaned against a post and waited. An extra was called through the street. He bought one, read its arraignment of himself with contemptuously out-thrust lip, and frowned at the paragraph which spoke of his son. It was a lie. Frank had to catch the train. Something that Gordon had said the day before marched and countermarched through his brain in stark procession: "No business scheme actually contemplates the taking of human life; it simply overlooks it entirely. It does not enter, so to speak, in the specifications." Pooh! Gordon was an old fool.

The crowd stopped counting as the bearers of still burdens came down into the inclosure. Some of these lived; more did not; all were horrible. Larrabee watched them with hard, keen eyes as they were carried past, especially the men. All New York seemed to his fretted nerves to be straining at those ropes to claim its dead. Strangled sobs came to him as stretchers went out with what was left of men and women; red eyes and unsteady lips blurred across his sharp vision. He took out a telegraph blank and sent another message after the boy.

Darkness came, and over the wreck of both buildings lanterns gleamed out, bobbing here and there. They could not do much more until morning. The mob thinned out, save for those who

waited for their dead, and the fluctuat ing crowd of the curious. Larrabee lingered, shivering, scowling. Tomorrow he would hear from the boy.

It was late the next day before they found him, far down where he had pitched into the basement of the Berwick. When they reached him life had been gone but a little while, and the rigidity of death was not yet on him. They might only conjecture how long he had kept the horror of consciousness, but the imprint of it lay plainly written in the twisted agony of his face. Death had come harshly to Larrabee's

boy. They brought him up gently, and one of them spread a handkerchief over the face with the mortal struggle frozen on it to blast the strong man's memory.

Larrabee saw them coming. All day he had watched the swarming workers, and this time they were bringing something to him. He moistened his lips nervously, and his twitching fingers nursed the gray unshaven stubble on his chin. At the jerk of his head they laid the stretcher before him and turned away. Larrabee raised the handkerchief slowly, and looked into the face of his boy.

TH

HE opening of the campaign of the fourth year of the great tragedy was about to begin. The Federal Government had tested six of that army's corp commanders as generals commanding, and had imported one other from the west, and under all these, Failure had been blazoned upon the banners of the Potomac army. McDowell, McClellan, Pope, McClellan (again), Burnside, Hooker and Meade had each in turn essayed the solution of that problem, "On to Richmond!" Back and forth across the scarred and torn bosom of the grand old Mother of States, both armies had strained in the tug of war. Yet that thin grey line tipped with bright steel, gaunt and veteran, defiantly stood in the path.

"Dilenda est Cartago" had been transformed to Richmond est dilenda. New combinations must now be created and one more mighty effort to crush the rebellion (?).

In

For the consummation of this plan, a new head was needed for the chief and most powerful Federal arm. seeking for such a one, the Washington government summoned Major General Ulysses S. Grant from his successes in the West and promoted him to the rank of Lieutenant-General and placed him in command of all the Federal armies in the field. Of course he could not be ubiquitous. To be personally with each army, scattered from Texas to Maryland, was manifestly a physical impossibility. The power to name and be responsible for the commanding officers of the several armies, were lodged with him. He elected for his personal operations the army of the Potomac.

General George G. Meade had retained command of that army since the

Battle of Gettysburg. Since then, he had failed to measure up to the expectation of both the people and the government. He failed to reap the benefits of Lee's repulse at Gettysburg, possibly through excess of caution. He allowed Lee to flank him out of his position before the Rapidan in October, then bluff him into a retreat before Mine Run.

Yet Lieutenant-General Grant permitted him to remain ostensibly in command of the Potomac army.

The new head of the Federal armies in the field, after being called to Washington, devoted some time to the study of campaigns. He analyzed those of McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker and Meade. General Dick Taylor states he was reliably informed by officers in Washington, after a carfeul survey of all these former efforts to reach Richmond, the new Lieutenant. General approved the plan of McClellan-The Peninsular Route-because the York and James rivers would become flanking positions and means of transportation combined. Gunboats in either river would secure his flanks and at the same time protect his transports bearing troops and supplies. Along the "Misty Rappahannock" and murky Rapidan lay that veteran gray line of famous "foot cavalry," trained by Stonewall and bequathed to "Marse Robert." For three years they had been a menace and dread to tthe Washington authorities; and when General Grant suggested the transfer of the Potomac army from its position facing Lee's lines, a forcible protest was entered by Mr. Lincoln and his War Secretary. Said they: "You don't know those men under Lee. Move this army to the Peninsula! In three days those racers will be in Washington!"