“It is a long voyage from Gravois with a load of wood, Capitaine—­I am very grateful.”

“Business is business, Mr. Renault,” was the self-contained reply.

“Alphonse!” cried Mr. Renault, “Alphonse!” A door opened in the back wall.  “Du vin pour Monsieur le Capitaine.”

“Oui, M’sieu.”

Eliphalet was too frightened to wonder why this taciturn handler of wood was called Captain, and treated with such respect.

“Guess I won’t take any wine to-night, Mr. Renault,” said he.  “You go inside, or you’ll take cold.”

Mr. Renault protested, asked about all the residents of Gravois way, and finally obeyed.  Eliphalet’s heart was in his mouth.  A bolder spirit would have dashed for liberty.  Eliphalet did not possess that kind of bravery.  He was waiting for the Captain to turn toward his wagon.

He looked down the area instead, with the light from the street lamp on his face.  Fear etched an ineffaceable portrait of him on Mr. Hopper’s mind, so that he knew him instantly when he saw him years afterward.  Little did he reckon that the fourth time he was to see him this man was to be President of the United States.  He wore a close-cropped beard, an old blue army overcoat, and his trousers were tucked into a pair of muddy cowhide boots.

Swiftly but silently the man reached down and hauled Eliphalet to the sidewalk by the nape of the neck.

“What were you doing there?” demanded he of the blue overcoat, sternly.

Eliphalet did not answer.  With one frantic wrench he freed himself, and ran down Locust Street.  At the corner, turning fearfully, he perceived the man in the overcoat calmly preparing to unload his wood.

CHAPTER III

THE UNATTAINABLE SIMPLICITY

To Mr. Hopper the being caught was the unpardonable crime.  And indeed, with many of us, it is humiliation and not conscience which makes the sting.  He walked out to the end of the city’s growth westward, where the new houses were going up.  He had reflected coolly on consequences, and found there were none to speak of.  Many a moralist, Mr. Davitt included, would have shaken his head at this.  Miss Crane’s whole Puritan household would have raised their hands in horror at such a doctrine.

Some novelists I know of, who are in reality celebrated surgeons in disguise, would have shown a good part of Mr. Eliphalet Hopper’s mental insides in as many words as I have taken to chronicle his arrival in St. Louis.  They invite us to attend a clinic, and the horrible skill with which they wield the scalpel holds us spellbound.  For God has made all of us, rogue and saint, burglar and burgomaster, marvellously alike.  We read a patent medicine circular and shudder with seven diseases.  We peruse one of Mr. So and So’s intellectual tonics and are sure we are complicated scandals, fearfully and wonderfully made.