The Law-Breakers and Other Stories

Law-Breakers and Other Stories,
by Robert Grant

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Title: The Law-Breakers and Other Stories
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ROBERT GRANT
The Law-Breakers and Other Stories
The American Short Story Series
VOLUME 58

CONTENTS
The Law-Breakers Against His Judgment St. George and the Dragon
The Romance of a Soul An Exchange of Courtesies Across the Way A
Surrender

THE LAW-BREAKERS
I
George Colfax was in an outraged frame of mind, and properly so.

Politically speaking, George was what might be called, for lack of a
better term, a passive reformer. That is, he read religiously the New
York Nation, was totally opposed to the spoils system of party rewards,
and was ostensibly as right-minded a citizen as one would expect to
find in a Sabbath day's journey. He subscribed one dollar a year to the
civil-service reform journal, and invariably voted on Election Day for
the best men, cutting out in advance the names of the candidates
favored by the Law and Order League of his native city, and carrying
them to the polls in order to jog his memory. He could talk knowingly,
too, by the card, of the degeneracy of the public men of the nation, and
had at his finger-ends inside information as to the manner in which
President This or Congressman That had sacrificed the ideals of a
vigorous manhood to the brass idol known as a second term. In fact,
there was scarcely a prominent political personage in the country for
whom George had a good word in every-day conversation. And when
the talk was of municipal politics he shook his head with a profundity
of gloom which argued an utterly hopeless condition of affairs--a sort
of social bottomless pit.
And yet George was practically passive. He voted right, but, beyond his
yearly contribution of one dollar, he did nothing else but cavil and
deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and
went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private
calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political
slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable,
quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women
termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the
same time fascinating--an alluring combination to the sex which always
likes a moral frame for its fancies.
It was to a woman that George was unbosoming his distress on this
particular occasion, and, as has been already indicated, his indignation
and disgust were entirely justified. Her name was Miss Mary
Wellington, and she was the girl whom he wished with all his heart to
marry. It was no hasty conclusion on his part. He knew her, as he might
have said, like a book, from the first page to the last, for he had met her
constantly at dances and dinners ever since she "came out" seven years

before, and he was well aware that her physical charms were
supplemented by a sympathetic, lively, and independent spirit. One
mark of her independence--the least satisfactory to him--was that she
had refused him a week before; or, more accurately speaking, the
matter had been left in this way: she had rejected him for the time being
in order to think his offer over. Meanwhile he had decided to go abroad
for sixty days--a shrewd device on his part to cause her to miss
him--and here he was come to pay his adieus, but bubbling over at the
same time with what he