The Debtor | Page 9

he was at high tide of a small prosperity, this same man came to him with a proposal for him to furnish on contract a large quantity of coal to this same railroad. Arthur jumped at the chance. The contract was drawn up by a lawyer in the nearest town and signed. Arthur, trusting blindly to the honesty and good-will of everybody, had hurried for his train without seeing more than that the stipulated rates had been properly mentioned in the contract. His wife was ill; in fact, Charlotte was only a few days old, and he was anxious and eager to be home. There had been no strikes at that period in that vicinity, and indeed comparatively few in the whole country. Arthur would almost as soon have thought of guarding in his contract against an earthquake; but the strike clause was left out, and there was a strike. In consequence he was unable to fill the contract without ruin, and he was therefore ruined. In the end the old friend of his father, who had purchased his patrimony, remained in undisputed possession of it, with an additional value of several thousands from the passage of the railroad through one end of the plantation, and had, besides, the mine. Arthur had sold the mine at a nominal price to pay his debts, to a third party who represented this man. He had been left actually penniless with a wife and two babies to support, but as his pocket became empty his very soul had seemed to become full to overflowing with the rage and bitterness of his worldly experience. He had learned that the man whom he had trusted had instigated the strike; he learned about the railroad deal. One night he went to his plantation with a shot-gun. He approached the house which had formerly been his own home, where the man was living then. He fully intended to shoot him. He had not a doubt but he should do it, and he had always considered that he should have carried out his purpose had not an old horse which the man had purchased with the estate, and which was loose on the lawn, from some reason or other, whinnied eagerly, and sidled up to him, and thrust her nose over his shoulder. He had been used, when a boy, to feed her sugar, and she remembered. Arthur went away through the soft Southern moonlight without shooting the man. Somehow it was because of the horse, and he never knew why it was. The old childish innocence and happiness seemed to flood over him in a light of spirit which dimmed the moonlight and swept away the will for murder from his soul. But the bitterness and the hate of the man who had wronged him never left him. The next day he went North, and the man in possession breathed more easily, for he had had secret misgivings.
"You had better look out," another man had said to him. "You have trodden on the toes of a tiger when you have trodden on the toes of a Carroll. Sooner or later you will have to pay for it."
No one in the little Kentucky village knew what had become of Arthur Carroll for some time, with the exception of an aunt of Mrs. Carroll's, who was possessed of some property and who lived there. She knew, but she told nothing, probably because she had a fierce pride of family. After years the Carroll girls, Ina and Charlotte, had come back to their father's birthplace and attended a small school some three miles distant from the village, a select young ladies' establishment at which their mother had been educated, and they had visited rather often at their great-aunt Catherine's. After they had finished school, the great-aunt had paid the bills, although nobody knew it, not even the elderly sisters who kept the school, since the aunt lied and stated that Captain Carroll had sent the money. Arthur Carroll was called captain then, and nobody knew why, least of all Carroll himself. Suddenly he had been called captain, and after making a disclaimer or two at first, he had let it go; it was a minor dishonesty, and forced upon him in a measure. The old aunt calmly stated that he had joined the army, been rapidly promoted, and had resigned. People laughed a little, but not to her face. Besides, she had stated that Arthur was a very rich man, and much thought of among the Yankees, and nobody was in a position to disprove that. Certainly when the feminine Carrolls visited in the old place, their appearance carried out the theory of riches. They were very well dressed, and they looked well fed, with that placid, assured air which