Dusk⁠—of a summer night. And the tall walls of the commercial heart of an American city of perhaps 400,000 inhabitants⁠—such walls as in time may linger as a mere fable. And up the broad street, now c...

Dusk⁠—of a summer night. And the tall walls of the commercial heart of an American city of perhaps 400,000 inhabitants⁠—such walls as in time may linger as a mere fable. And up the broad street, now c...

That such a family, thus cursorily presented, might have a different and somewhat peculiar history could well be anticipated, and it would be true. Indeed, this one presented one of those anomalies of...

One of the things that served to darken Clyde’s mood just about the time when he was seeking some practical solution for himself, to say nothing of its profoundly disheartening effect on the Griffiths...

The effect of this particular conclusion was to cause Clyde to think harder than ever about himself. And the principal result of his thinking was that he must do something for himself and soon. Up to ...

The imaginative flights of Clyde in connection with all this⁠—his dreams of what it might mean for him to be connected with so glorious an institution⁠—can only be suggested. For his ideas of luxury w...

And as conditions stood, the extraordinary economic and social inexperience of the Griffiths⁠—Asa and Elvira⁠—dovetailed all too neatly with his dreams. For neither Asa nor Elvira had the least knowle...

And so, of all the influences which might have come to Clyde at this time, either as an aid or an injury to his development, perhaps the most dangerous for him, considering his temperament, was this s...

The thing that most interested Clyde at first was how, if at all, he was to keep the major portion of all this money he was making for himself. For ever since he had been working and earning money, it...

And so the interesting dinner, with Clyde attending, came to pass. And it was partaken of at Frissell’s, as Ratterer had said. And by now Clyde, having come to be on genial terms with all of these you...

Prepared as Clyde was to dislike all this, so steeped had he been in the moods and maxims antipathetic to anything of its kind, still so innately sensual and romantic was his own disposition and so st...

The effect of this adventure on Clyde was such as might have been expected in connection with one so new and strange to such a world as this. In spite of all that deep and urgent curiosity and desire ...

Now trivial as this contact may seem to some, it was of the utmost significance to Clyde. Up to this time he had never seen a girl with so much charm who would deign to look at him, or so he imagined....

For a period of four months at least this was exactly the way it worked out. After meeting her in this fashion, he was devoting not an inconsiderable portion of his free time to attempting to interest...

The result of all this on Clyde was to cause him to think more specifically on the problem of the sexes than he ever had before, and by no means in any orthodox way. For while he condemned his sister’...

As Hortense well knew Clyde was pressing more and more hungrily toward that ultimate condescension on her part, which, though she would never have admitted it to him, was the privilege of two others. ...

True to her promise, the following day Hortense returned to Mr. Rubenstein, and with all the cunning of her nature placed before him, with many reservations, the nature of the dilemma which confronted...

In connection with the automobile ride suggested and arranged for the following Sunday by Hegglund through his chauffeur friend, a change of plan was announced. The car⁠—an expensive Packard, no less⁠...

The climax of the afternoon was reached, however, when after several more dances and drinks, the small river and its possibilities was again brought to the attention of all by Hegglund, who, looking o...

For the major portion of the return trip to Kansas City, there was nothing to mar the very agreeable illusion under which Clyde rested. He sat beside Hortense, who leaned her head against his shoulder...

The home of Samuel Griffiths in Lycurgus, New York, a city of some twenty-five thousand inhabitants midway between Utica and Albany. Near the dinner hour and by degrees the family assembling for its c...

The home of Samuel Griffiths in Lycurgus, New York, a city of some twenty-five thousand inhabitants midway between Utica and Albany. Near the dinner hour and by degrees the family assembling for its c...

The head of the Lycurgus branch of the Griffiths, as contrasted with the father of the Kansas City family, was most arresting. Unlike his shorter and more confused brother of the Door of Hope, whom he...

The Clyde whom Samuel Griffiths described as having met at the Union League Club in Chicago, was a somewhat modified version of the one who had fled from Kansas City three years before. He was now twe...

However, as he now fancied, it was because he lacked an education that he had done so poorly. Because of those various moves from city to city in his early youth, he had never been permitted to collec...

But once in this and walking about, how different it all seemed to the world to which so recently he had been accustomed. For here, as he had thus far seen, all was on a so much smaller scale. The dep...

The room which Clyde secured this same day with the aid of Mrs. Braley, was in Thorpe Street, a thoroughfare enormously removed in quality if not in distance from that in which his uncle resided. Inde...

In so far as his life at Mrs. Cuppy’s went, he was not so very happily placed there, either. For that was but a commonplace rooming and boarding house, which drew to it, at best, such conservative mil...

Nevertheless, the next day being a Saturday and half holiday the year round in this concern, Mr. Whiggam came through with the pay envelopes. “Here you are, Mr. Griffiths,” he said, as though he were ...

Apart from the momentary thrill and zest of this, the effect was to throw Clyde, as before, speculatively back upon the problem of his proper course here. For here was this girl, and she was approachi...

At this point a maid announced that supper was served and instantly Gilbert took his departure. At the same time the family arose and Mrs. Griffiths asked the maid: “Has Bella telephoned yet?” “No, ma...

The days lapsed and, although no further word came from the Griffiths, Clyde was still inclined to exaggerate the importance of this one contact and to dream from time to time of delightful meetings w...

The import of twenty-five dollars a week! Of being the head of a department employing twenty-five girls! Of wearing a good suit of clothes again! Sitting at an official desk in a corner commanding a c...

The reasons why a girl of Roberta’s type should be seeking employment with Griffiths and Company at this time and in this capacity are of some point. For, somewhat after the fashion of Clyde in relati...

In the same way Clyde, on encountering her, was greatly stirred. Since the abortive contact with Dillard, Rita and Zella, and afterwards the seemingly meaningless invitation to the Griffiths with its ...

The thoughts of Clyde at this time in regard to Roberta and his general situation in Lycurgus were for the most part confused and disturbing. For had not Gilbert warned him against associating with th...

The outcome of that afternoon was so wonderful for both that for days thereafter neither could cease thinking about it or marveling that anything so romantic and charming should have brought them toge...

It was quite dark when Roberta stole out on Wednesday night to meet Clyde. But before that what qualms and meditations in the face of her willingness and her agreement to do so. For not only was it di...

The culmination of this meeting was but the prelude, as both Clyde and Roberta realized, to a series of contacts and rejoicings which were to extend over an indefinite period. They had found love. The...

The return of Roberta and Clyde, as well as their outing together, was quite unobserved, as they thought. On the car from Fonda they recognized no one. And at the Newtons’ Grace was already in bed. Sh...

However, as both Roberta and Clyde soon found, after several weeks in which they met here and there, such spots as could be conveniently reached by interurban lines, there were still drawbacks and the...

The state of Roberta’s mind for that night is not easily to be described. For here was true and poignant love, and in youth true and poignant love is difficult to withstand. Besides it was coupled wit...

The wonder and delight of a new and more intimate form of contact, of protest gainsaid, of scruples overcome! Days, when both, having struggled in vain against the greater intimacy which each knew tha...

And then, one November evening as Clyde was walking along Wykeagy Avenue, just west of Central, a portion of the locally celebrated avenue which, ever since he had moved to Mrs. Peyton’s he was accust...

The effect of this so casual contact was really disrupting in more senses than one. For now in spite of his comfort in and satisfaction with Roberta, once more and in this positive and to him entranci...

But in the interim, in connection with his relations with Roberta no least reference to Sondra, although, even when near her in the factory or her room, he could not keep his thoughts from wandering a...

The dinner itself was chatter about a jumble of places, personalities, plans, most of which had nothing to do with anything that Clyde had personally contacted here. However, by reason of his own char...

The ensuing December days brought to Clyde some pleasing and yet complicating and disturbing developments. For Sondra Finchley, having found him so agreeable an admirer of hers, was from the first inc...

Six-thirty the following morning. And Clyde, after but a single hour’s rest after his return from Gloversville, rising, his mind full of mixed and troubled thoughts as to how to readjust his affairs i...

Biltz and the fungoid farm land after Clyde and Lycurgus was depressing enough to Roberta, for all there was too closely identified with deprivations and repressions which discolor the normal emotions...

But Roberta’s return to Lycurgus and her room at the Gilpins’ Christmas night brought no sign of Clyde nor any word of explanation. For in connection with the Griffiths in the meantime there had been ...

Unfortunately, however, the Christmas dinner at the Griffiths’, which included the Starks and their daughter Arabella, Mr. and Mrs. Wynant, who in the absence of their daughter Constance with Gilbert ...

Clyde now was actually part and parcel of this local winter social scene. The Griffiths having introduced him to their friends and connections, it followed as a matter of course that he would be recei...

One of the things that Roberta soon found was that her intuitive notions in regard to all this were not without speedy substantiation. For exactly as before, though with the usual insistence afterward...

But the resources of Clyde, in such a situation as this, were slim. For, apart from Liggett, Whiggam, and a few minor though decidedly pleasant and yet rather remote department heads, all of whom were...

But the remedy he purchased failed to work. And because of nausea and his advice she had not gone to the factory, but lay about worrying. But, no saving result appearing, she began to take two pills e...

Nevertheless hours and even days, and finally a week and then ten days, passed without any word from him as to the whereabouts of a doctor to whom she could go. For although having said so much to her...

The information thus gained was a relief, but only partially so. For both Clyde and Roberta there was no real relief now until this problem should be definitely solved. And although within a few momen...

The first effect of the doctor’s decision was to shock and terrify them both⁠—Roberta and Clyde⁠—beyond measure. For apparently now here was illegitimacy and disgrace for Roberta. Exposure and destruc...

Opposing views such as these, especially where no real skill to meet such a situation existed, could only spell greater difficulty and even eventual disaster unless chance in some form should aid. And...

Two incidents which occurred at this time tended still more to sharpen the contrary points of view holding between Clyde and Roberta. One of these was no more than a glimpse which Roberta had one even...

The fifth of June arriving, the Finchleys departed as Sondra had indicated, but not without a most urgent request from her that he be prepared to come to the Cranstons’ either the second or third week...

Two letters, which arrived at this time and simultaneously, but accentuated the difficulty of all this. Pine Point Landing, June 10th Clyde mydie: How is my pheet phing? All whytie? It’s just glorious...

Yet a thought such as that of the lake, connected as it was with the predicament by which he was being faced, and shrink from it though he might, was not to be dismissed as easily as he desired. Born ...

And then on his return to Lycurgus early Monday morning, the following letter from Roberta, Dear Clyde: My dear, I have often heard the saying, “it never rains but it pours,” but I never knew what it ...

There are moments when in connection with the sensitively imaginative or morbidly anachronistic⁠—the mentality assailed and the same not of any great strength and the problem confronting it of suffici...

And then at noon on Tuesday, July sixth, the station platform of the railroad running from Fonda to Utica, with Roberta stepping down from the train which came south from Biltz to await Clyde, for the...

And then, as planned that night between them⁠—a trip to Grass Lake the next morning in separate cars, but which, upon their arrival and to his surprise, proved to be so much more briskly tenanted than...

Cataraqui County extending from the northernmost line of the village known as Three Mile Bay on the south to the Canadian border, on the north a distance of fifty miles. And from Senaschet and Indian ...

Cataraqui County extending from the northernmost line of the village known as Three Mile Bay on the south to the Canadian border, on the north a distance of fifty miles. And from Senaschet and Indian ...

The information obtained by Coroner Heit and his assistant was of a singular and disturbing character. In the first instance, because of the disappearance of a boat and an apparently happy and attract...

Coroner Heit, his official duties completed for the time being, found himself pondering, as he traveled south on the lake train, how he was to proceed farther. What was the next step he should take in...

Orville Mason could readily sympathize with a family which on sight struck him as having, perhaps, like himself endured the whips, the scorns and contumelies of life. As he drove up in his official ca...

As he proceeded to his office, accompanied by Alden and the officials in this case, his thought was running on the motive of this heinous crime⁠—the motive. And because of his youthful sexual deprivat...

In the interim the mental state of Clyde since that hour when, the water closing over Roberta, he had made his way to the shore, and then, after changing his clothes, had subsequently arrived at Sharo...

From Friday morning until the following Tuesday noon, moving amid such scenes as previously had so exhilarated and enthralled him, Clyde was now compelled to suffer the most frightful fears and dreads...

The morrow dawned after an all but sleepless night, harrowed by the most torturesome dreams in regard to Roberta, men who arrived to arrest him, and the hike, until at last he arose, his nerves and ey...

In the absence of Clyde, the impressions taken by Mr. Mason of the world in which he moved here, complementing and confirming those of Lycurgus and Sharon, were sufficient to sober him in regard to th...

The effect of Mason’s reappearance in the camp with the news, announced first to Frank Harriet, next to Harley Baggott and Grant Cranston, that Clyde was under arrest⁠—that he actually had confessed t...

In connection with the autopsy and its results there was a decided setback. For while the joint report of the five doctors showed: “An injury to the mouth and nose; the tip of the nose appears to have...

And then out of the north woods a crime sensation of the first magnitude, with all of those intriguingly colorful, and yet morally and spiritually atrocious, elements⁠—love, romance, wealth, poverty, ...

And then on the following morning Samuel Griffiths, with his own son Gilbert standing by, in the large drawing room of their Wykeagy Avenue mansion, listening to Smillie’s report of his conference wit...

Mr. Catchuman did not prove by any means to be the one to extract from Clyde anything more than had either Mason or Smillie. Although shrewd to a degree in piecing together out of the muddled statemen...

Mr. Reuben Jephson was decidedly different from Belknap, Catchuman, Mason, Smillie⁠—in fact anyone, thus far, who had seen Clyde or become legally interested in this case. He was young, tall, thin, ru...

The result of all this, however, was that it was finally decided that perhaps the easiest and safest defense that could be made, assuming that the Griffiths family of Lycurgus would submit to it, woul...

The struggle and excitement of a great murder trial! Belknap and Jephson, after consulting with Brookhart and Catchuman, learning that they considered Jephson’s plan “perhaps the only way,” but with a...

The telegram, worded in the spirit just described, was forthwith despatched care of Belknap and Jephson, who immediately counseled Clyde what to reply⁠—that all was well with him; that he had the best...

October 15⁠—with gray clouds and a sharp, almost January wind that herded the fallen leaves into piles and then scurried them in crisp and windy gusts like flying birds here and there. And, in spite o...

And then five entire days consumed by Mason and Belknap in selecting a jury. But at last the twelve men who were to try Clyde, sworn and seated. And such men⁠—odd and grizzled, or tanned and wrinkled,...

And then witnesses, witnesses, witnesses⁠—to the number of one hundred and twenty-seven. And their testimony, particularly that of the doctors, three guides, the woman who heard Roberta’s last cry, al...

And then, on the eleventh day, Frank W. Schaefer, clerk of the Renfrew House in Utica, recalling the actual arrival of Clyde and Roberta and their actions; also Clyde’s registration for both as Mr. an...

By eight o’clock the next morning the great city papers were on the stands with the sprawling headlines, which informed everyone in no uncertain terms: Prosecution in Griffiths’ case closes with impre...

Clyde’s testimony proceeded to the point where the family had removed from Quincy, Illinois (a place resorted to on account of some Salvation Army work offered his father and mother), to Kansas City, ...

The mood of Mason throughout the entire direct examination was that of a restless harrier anxious to be off at the heels of its prey⁠—of a foxhound within the last leap of its kill. A keen and surging...

The remainder of the trial consisted of the testimony of eleven witnesses⁠—four for Mason and seven for Clyde. One of the latter⁠—a Dr. A. K. Sword, of Rehobeth⁠—chancing to be at Big Bittern on the d...

The dreary aftermath of a great contest and a great failure, with the general public from coast to coast⁠—in view of this stern local interpretation of the tragedy⁠—firmly convinced that Clyde was gui...

Bridgeburg and a slow train that set down a tired, distrait woman at its depot after midnight on the eighth of December. Bitter cold and bright stars. A lone depot assistant who on inquiry directed he...

The “death house” in this particular prison was one of those crass erections and maintenances of human insensitiveness and stupidity principally for which no one primarily was really responsible. Inde...

But after this the long days in prison for Clyde. Except for a weekly visit from his mother, who, once she was entered upon her work, found it difficult to see him more often than that⁠—traveling as s...

In the meantime, however, Asa’s condition had remained serious, and it was four entire months before it was possible for him to sit up again or for Mrs. Griffiths to dream of resuming her lecturing sc...

The personal conviction and force of such an individual as the Reverend McMillan, while in one sense an old story to Clyde and not anything which so late as eighteen months before could have moved him...

The depression resulting even after two days was apparent to the Reverend McMillan, who was concerned to know why. More recently, he had been led to believe by Clyde’s manner, his visits, if not the f...

The scene was the executive chamber of the newly elected Governor of the State of New York some three weeks after the news conveyed to Clyde by McMillan. After many preliminary and futile efforts on t...

Dusk, of a summer night. And the tall walls of the commercial heart of the city of San Francisco⁠—tall and gray in the evening shade. And up a broad street from the south of Market⁠—now comparatively ...