The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1915-04-16
CHAPTER !.
The Message From the Deep.

Inc two old men sat In the llbraT.
cycling the unresponsive blue envelope
that lay on the end of the long table
nearest the fireplace, where a merr,
but unnoticed bed Of Goals cracked
fiercely in the vain effort to cry dowr
the shrieks of the bleak December
wind that whistled about the corners
of the house.
There was something maddening in
the fact that the envelope would have
to remain unopened until young Fred
erick Brood came home for the night
They found themselves wondering il
in at all. Their hour for retiring was
ten o'clock, day in, day out.
Up to half-past nine they discussed
the blue envelope with every inmate
of the house, from Mrs. John Dee.
mond. the housekeeper, down to the
voiceless but eloquent decanter of port
that stood between them, first on the
arm of one chair, then the other. They
were very old men; they could solilo-
quize without in the least disturbing
each other. An observer would say,
during these periods of abstraction,
that their remarks were addressed to
the decanter and that the poor decan-
ter had something to say in return.
But, for all that, their eyes seldom left
the broad. blue envelope that had lain
there since half-past eight.
They knew that it came directly or
Indirectly from the man to whom they
owed their present condition of COM
fort and security after half a century
of vicissitudes; from the man whose
life they had saved more than once
in those old, e. days when comforts
were so few that they passed without
recognition in the maelstrom of
events. From midocean James Brood
was speaking to his son.
Twenty years ago these two old cro-
hies had met James Brood in one of
the blacklist holes Of Calcutta, a dere-
lict being swept to perdition with the
swiftness and sureness of a tide that
knows no pause. They found him
when the dregs were at his lips, and
the stupor of defeat in his brain.
Without meaning to be considered
Samaritans, good or bad, they dragged
him from the depths and found that
they had revived man. Those were
the days when James Broods life
meant nothing to him, days when he
was tortured by the thought that it
would be all too long for him to en-
dure, yet he was not the kind to muir
der himself as men do who lack the
courage to go on living
Weeks after the rescue in Calcutta
these two soldiers of fortune and an
other, John Desmond, learned from
the lips of the man himself that he
was not such as they, but rich in this
worlds goods, richer than the Solo
mon of their discreet imagination.
What Brood told them of his life
brought the grim smile of appreciation
to the lips of each. He had married
beautiful foreigner-an Austrian, they
gathefed-of excellent family, aHd1had
taken her to his home in New York.
city, to the house in lower Fifth ave- |
nue. where his father and grandfather |
had lived before him-the house in |
which two of the wayfarers after
twenty years, now sat in rueful con-
temptation Of a blue envelope.
A baby boy came to the Broods in |
the second year of their welded life,
but before that there had come a
music master, dreamy-eyed,
handsome, Latin; man who played
upon the harp as only the angels may
play. In his delirious rawlings Brood
cursed this man and the wife he had
stolen away from him. he reviled the
baby boy, even denying him; he
laughed with blood-curdling glee over
The manner in which he had cast out
The woman who had broken his heart
and crushed his pride; he walled in
anguish over the mistake he had made
n allowing the man to live that he
night gloat and sheer in triumph. This
much the three men who lifted him
rom hell were able to CLEAN from lips
hat knew not what they said, and ,
hey were filled with pity. Later on,
n a rational weakness. he told them ,
more, and without curses. A deem. ,
tlent, sfeadfast bitterness succeeded ,
he violent rawlings. He became a way- ,
arer with them, quiet. logged, fatal; ,
where they went he also went. what |,
hey did, also did he. Soon he led. and )
hey followed. Into the dark places ,
+ the world they plunged, for peril
meant little to him, death even less.
hey no longer knew days of priya- 4
lon--he shared his wealth with them: !
ut they knew no rest, no peace, no y
afety. Life had been Whirlwfnd be- ;
ore they came upon James Brood; it i
Ias hurricane afterwarf1.. :
Twice John Desmond, younger than 4
'anbury Dawes and Joseph Riggs, 7
aved the life OF James Brood by
cts of unparalleled heroism; once In a
South African jungle when a lion q
50 fought for her young, and again n
, upper India, when single-handed, IL
9 held off a horde OF Hindus for t.
Ays while his comrade lay wound n
4 In a cavern. Dawes and Riggs, W
the Himalayas, crept down the IL
all OF ! precipice, with five thou Al
md feet between them and the c.
p<tom ef the gorge, to drag him from pt