The Bachelors. William Dana Orcutt

had failed, the sensitiveness of his nature placed his classmates on trial, appointed himself judge, and condemned them as guilty of injustice, the most heinous crime in the category of sin. As a penalty, he had banished them from his life. The fact that they bore their punishment with seeming indifference served only to twist the knife in the wound.

      His devotion to Marian Seymour gave his strange nature its only outlet. Her father and his had been bosom friends in boyhood, and they had hoped to see their children bound together in even closer ties. The tense, deep nature of the boy dominated—even more so after he went to college and she to school, and they saw less of each other. He was different from other boys she knew, and at first it pleased her vanity that he had no thought for any one else, even though he demanded so much of her. Then she became fairly terrified by his intensity, and when she broke the engagement, just after his graduation, she welcomed her release.

      Her engagement and marriage to Thatcher supplied the final evidence that the whole world was built upon a structure of injustice, and Hamlen fled from it with a sense of leaving behind a thing despised. During all these years the judge had worn his ermine, and the world represented the condemned prisoner, working out its sentence, but somehow failing to gain salutary results from its long chastisement. Now a belated witness appears, supplying testimony which shakes the integrity of the judicial decision. Huntington presents the case from a position new to the self-appointed judge, and Hamlen had spent many hours since that eventful meeting wondering whether the world had really been on trial or he himself. Many of the words which Marian had spoken, which had not made their impression when he first heard them came back with redoubled force after Huntington had added his testimony to hers. "Was it their failure to understand you or your failure to give them the opportunity?" she asked. "The citizens of the college world are young, untried boys," Huntington explained, "trying to conduct themselves like full-grown men." What right had he to condemn them because in their youth and inexperience they had fallen below the standard older men had set? Had he a right to expect them to search him out any more than they a right to demand the same of him? "You drew me to you with irresistible force," Marian admitted, only to make the agony the more unbearable when she added, "Then you repelled me by your intolerance of all those lighter interests which were natural to youth of our age." Intolerance! That was a form of injustice, and he had judged her guilty upon the same indictment! "Each member of the Class measures up his fellow-members by what they have done since they have left college," Huntington had said. Every word seemed seared into Hamlen's brain as he put himself through this fierce analysis. "What have you really accomplished?" was Marian's question.

      So Hamlen had struggled with himself during the intervening hours, and now Huntington came to him as a classmate, as a friend, claiming kinship and insisting upon recognition of his claim. If Monty Huntington had been what Hamlen believed him to be in college, he would not now have forced himself upon him in spite of his own rude disclaimers of any present desire for recognition. If he had misjudged Huntington had he not misjudged his other classmates, had he not misjudged the world at large?

      This was the doubt which had been raised in Hamlen's mind, and with it came a sense of responsibility and the necessity of restitution should that doubt turn into a certainty. Forty-eight hours earlier he had asked Marian, "What do I owe the world?" and it was from Huntington he received his answer. It was uncanny how closely the two opinions of the case, made by persons widely separated in viewpoint and environment, dovetailed each into the other. This interview with Huntington would settle all doubt, he was convinced, and if the injustice proved to be vested in himself alone, what was there left for him out of the wreck he had made of life? What wonder that he was ill at ease; what wonder that his heart beat more quickly as he realized that the moment of his own conviction might be at hand!

      They walked about the grounds, as the others had done, and Huntington's exclamations were no less enthusiastic; yet it was obvious that this was but a prelude to the real purpose of his visit. They paused for a moment as they came back through the garden, and the hesitation forced the question from Hamlen's lips.

      "Don't you care to see the view from the Point?"

      "Not to-day," Huntington answered frankly. "I want to come again and examine every cranny; but to-day, Hamlen, my interest lies in something deeper. You have shown me what you are by profession; now show me what you are by nature. You remember the old Greek adage, 'Would you know a man, give him power.' My version of it is 'Would you know a man, give him leisure'; for leisure is the expression of power, the stored-up capital of that unmeasured treasure called Time whose currency is in the blood and which promotes life itself. Here, in these grounds, your work has been similar to that of any one of us in his office. Now I want to know the man. Take me to his workshop."

      Hamlen understood him beyond the necessity of further words. He had told Marian that it was in his books that he found his relaxation, but it was not to his library that he now silently led his guest. It was to a small room on the back of the villa, in which Huntington found cases of type, a hand-press, and a bench containing every description of binder's tools. As they entered Hamlen closed the door behind them.

      "I don't know why I brought you here," he spoke apologetically, "except that by what you just said you seemed to know this place existed. No one else has ever entered with me, for I have a sentiment about it which would seem ridiculous to any one except myself."

      "It is a miniature printing-office and bindery combined!"

      "This is where I spend my leisure. This is where I withdraw into a solitude even more complete than that in which I live. These books"—pointing to a case near by—"represent the pitifully meager contribution which I have made to the world while you and my other classmates have taken the positions to which you are entitled. That I show them to you now is a confession of the narrow outlook I have always had on life."

      Huntington was busy examining the volumes, one by one, giving no sign that he heard the crisp words. He turned the leaves critically, he examined the bindings, he studied the typography and the designs. Then at length he looked up.

      "I was mistaken when I said I did not know you," he remarked.

      "I don't understand," Hamlen replied.

      "Printing as an art has always been a hobby of mine," Huntington explained. "With two exceptions I have every one of these books in my collection at home."

      The color came into Hamlen's face. "You mean—" he began.

      "I mean that these splendid examples of the bookmaker's art have attracted much attention among those of us who understand what they represent, and I count myself fortunate to be the first to solve the mystery which has surrounded them, when I next meet with my fellow-collectors."

      "How is it possible," demanded Hamlen, "that any of these should have fallen into your hands?"

      "Were they not placed upon the market?"

      "I did not suppose any of them reached America," Hamlen explained. "Out of curiosity to see what would happen I sent the first volumes to a dealer in London, and he has been kind enough to take the subsequent volumes as they have been issued."

      "And kind enough to himself," Huntington added, "to call the attention of all the leading collectors to the uniqueness of the work. Some time I will show you his circulars if you care to know what he thinks of you; and I may add that there is none of us who considers his claims exaggerated."

      "Then the work is good?" Hamlen asked, unable to conceal his excitement.

      "It is superb both in conception and execution; but its greatest merit is its originality. Most of the good printing and binding which we have to-day rests definitely in conception upon some one of the great master-printers or binders of the past: the work of Aldus, Jenson, Étienne, Plantin, Elzevir, Baskerville, Didot, William Morris, is drawn upon to greater or less degree by every modern printer, the volumes of Grolier, Maiolus, or Geoffroy Tory are revived in nearly every modern binding of importance; but your books are absolutely unique. Frankly, I don't sympathize with all of them, but there is not one which does not interest me. Tell me, where did you learn the art of bookmaking enough to make yourself a master?"

      "Your praise is too high," Hamlen