"He's an American.' "He's a gentleman, Caroline. I can tell by the look of him that he would be in Helena Frampton's train.”

"Helena is what you call omnivorous; but really, Frederick, it doesn't follow that every young man who is a gentleman is also one of her young men."

"Oh," said Lord Emscott, "give Helena a chance

Dinner was announced.

Dinners are very much like dinners the world over. The points at the table where Charles Edward and Singer were seated are the only ones which require watching. Austin had discussed two books, three plays, and the comparative healthfulness of the air of Hampstead and the Regent's Park with Mrs. Buxton before he turned to Lady Angela. He meant that everyone, Lady Emscott especially, should see that it was almost a sacrifice he had made in having Lady Angela next him. But he trusted that he could speedily remove any such impression from the mind of that young woman herself. It would serve no end to record their conversation. They got on well together, because, as later events proved, they were destined to get on well. And Charles Edward kept the conversation so in hand that only once did it journey towards the Riviera and reach Monte Carlo. "What do you think of Mrs. Frampton's locks?" enquired Angela.

"That," replied her host, "depends very much on what you happen individually to think of hair that color."

"I think perhaps it was nicer when it was a brighter red. You liked her immensely, I expect. All men do." "Oh, well

"Mother is too funny taking care of Helena. You know what she is like. She gets so confused with Helena's attendant swains. She had great difficulty in remembering you.' "I should hate to say anything against your mother's memory."

"That sounds as if she were a historical character." Lady Angela laughed, and Charles Edward was again safely across the ice. Indeed, he was now flushed with victory. It was his moment of pride, and it came before a fall in the conversational vigor of his guests when he and Lady Angela both heard Singer.

The explorer had become expansive under the influence of pleasant surroundings. "He is so amusing," he confided to Lady Emscott, deserting Asian wilds for the moment, and taking up their host as a topic.

"He had a most extraordinary idea for tonight. Of course he didn't carry it out when he found he could get you people. He told me he would get together a party composed of people he had never met before." Singer explained in somewhat greater detail the humor of the original idea. Charles Edward cursed Napoleon.

Charles Edward does not hesitate to use the most hackneyed of phrases, and asserts that "no pen could describe" the way in which a chilling suspicion crept slowly over the company. The conversation became general after a short, but, to the unhappy host, bloodcurdling pause. Without daring to watch anyone, he could feel the interchange of confidences. For one moment he relied on Mrs. Revell to stem the tide. She knew who he was. No; she only knew who he said he was! Through the intermediation of Mrs. Wilding, much reached his lordship's ear. At first he smiled rather scornfully, but after listening a little longer to the lady's murmurings he sent a glance at Charles Edward that brought that youth's eyes up from his plate as an electric shock might have done. He left Mrs. Buxton to struggle for her right hand neighbor's attention as best she might, and turned to Lady Angela.

"Well?" inquired the young woman. "Yes, it's so. Are you very angry?" "Yes, I am." This she said very gravely. Then, with a sudden laugh, "But it's so ridiculous."

"That was the idea. I hoped it would be amusing."

"My father hasn't your sense of humor. Didn't you face the fact in the beginning that if you were found out we should be angry?"

"Yes. But I didn't think it would matter quite so much as it seems to now." "What do you mean?"

"I suppose now I shall never be allowed to see you again."

"You only see me now by cheating." "I was a fool, I suppose, not to wait and try to be properly introduced."

'Do you really know anyone in England?" "Lady Butler-Warren is my cousin. She's an American, you know. But she is in America."

"Elizabeth Warren! Oh, but how can I tell you are speaking the truth now?"

"I don't know how you can. But I am. I don't so much care what the others think. I dislike having you think I am a hopeless bounder."

"What possessed you to do this?"

"I dined," said Charles Edward, "at the Savoy last Wednesday, not so very far from your table."

If Lady Angela's subsequent conduct seems to anyone to deviate from that lofty standard of ladylikeness to which her birth would seem to have destined her, or if Charles Edward's speeches, as here reported, seem inadequate to have soothed her anger, it must always be borne in mind that the two had already earlier in the dinner "got on very well." "By-the-by, Mr. Austin," Lord Emscott launched at his host across the table.

called upon him to choose between fine champagne, chartreuse, and kümmel doré, and, applying his mind to this problem, he forgot the other. Singer started afresh the discussion with Buxton on the advance of Russia towards India, and the dinner, reported afterwards by everyone to have been especially successful, passed on beautifully to its end.

"When I first saw Mr. Austin to-night I couldn't make out," Lady Angela went on, "why his face was so extraordinarily familiar to me. But when he spoke of his cousin I remembered at once. She has a large photograph of him standing on a writing table in her boudoir. Elizabeth used to tell me about him often. But somehow I didn't realize that our Mr. Austin and Elizabeth's were the same." Lord Emscott felt solid ground beneath his feet once more. If one could not count on the untrustworthiness of Caroline's memory, on what could one count? Just then a waiter

"I can't tell you what you are, murmured the host to his left hand neighbor. "Atleast not on so short an acquaintance."

"You see what you have made me. You must be Elizabeth's cousin now, if she has to adopt you."

"I swear I am. If I hadn't been I wouldn't have let you do what you did."

Ultimately the story, in a sort of way, gotout; there had been, of course, Mrs. Sackville and Hertwich toreckon with. But by that time Lady ButlerWarren had returned from New York, and her cousin was fairly well known to all of her friends, and very intimate at the Emscotts'. Indeed Helena Frampton, from the beginning, backed up Lord Emscott's view of his wife's memory. Helena had a sense of humor, and she had a letter from Angela written the morning after the famous dinner. In any case, in the thick of a London season even Sherlock Holmes would scarcely find time for really effective investigations. Not that they could in the end have done any great harm to anyone. The Austin connection in New York is really satisfactory, and the money is indisputable. The story of that night remains merely to prove that even in the beginning the pair cared for each other enough to be willing to make sacrifices, even of the truth-so Charles Edward says.

F

OR several days an uneasy rumor had been running up and down the Oil Regions. Freight rates were going up. Now an advance in a man's freight bill may ruin his business; more, it may mean the ruin of a region. Rumor said that the new rate meant just this; that is, that it more than covered the margin of profit in any branch of the oil business. There was another feature to the report; the railroads were not going to apply the proposed tariffs to everybody. They had agreed to give to a company unheard of until now-the South Improvement Company a special rate considerably lower than the new open rate. It was only a rumor and many people discredited it. Why should the railroads ruin the Oil Regions to build up a company of outsiders?

The Uprising in the Oil Regions

On the morning of February 26, 1872, the oil men read in their morning papers that the rise which had been threatening had come; moreover, that all members of the South Improvement Company were exempt from the advance. At the news all Oildom rushed into the streets. Nobody waited to find out his neighbor's opinion. On every lip there was but one word, and that was "conspiracy." In the vernacular of the region, it was evident that "a torpedo was filling for that scheme."

In twenty-four hours after the announcement of the increase in freight rates a mass meeting of three thousand excited, gesticulating oil men was gathered in the Opera House at Titusville. Producers, brokers, refiners, drillers, pumpers were in the crowd. Their temper was shown by the mottoes on the banners which they carried: "Down with the conspirators"-"No compromise"-"Don't give up the ship!" Three days later, as large a meeting was held at Oil City, its temper more warlike if possible; and so it went. They organized a Petroleum Producers' Union, pledged themselves to reduce their production by starting no new wells for sixty days and by shutting down on Sundays, to sell no oil to any person known to be in the South Improvement Company, but to support the Creek refiners

and those elsewhere who had refused to go into the combination, to boycott the offending railroads, and to build lines which they would own and control themselves. They sent a committee to the Legislature asking that the charter of the South Improvement Company be repealed, and another to Congress demanding an investigation of the whole business on the ground that it was an interference with trade. They ordered that a history of the conspiracy, giving the names of the conspirators and the designs of the company, should be prepared, and 30,000 copies sent to "judges of all courts, Senators of the United States, members of Congress and of State Legislatures, and to all railroad men and prominent business men of the country, to the end that enemies of the freedom of trade may be known and shunned by all honest men." They prepared a petition ninety-three feet long, praying for a free pipe-line bill, something which they had long wanted, but which, so far, the Pennsylvania Railroad had prevented their getting, and sent it by a committee to the Legislature; and for days they kept a thousand men ready to march on Harrisburg at a moment's notice if the Legislature showed signs of refusing their demands. In short, for weeks the whole body of oil men abandoned regular business and surged from town to town intent on destroying the "Monster," the "Forty Thieves," the "Great Anaconda," as they called the mysterious South Improvement Company. Curiously enough, it was chiefly against the combination which had secured the discrimination from the railroads-not the railroads which had granted it--that their fury was directed. They expected nothing but robbery from the railroads, they said. They were used to that; but they would not endure it from men in their own business.

Fighting in the Dark

When they began the fight, the mass of the oil men knew nothing more of the South Improvement Company than its name and the fact that it had secured from the railroads advantages in rates which were bound to ruin all independent refiners of oil and to put all

531963

les

some n. 7

a committe

nercy. Their tempers were he discovery that it was a n, and had been at work es for some weeks without t the first public meeting , leading refiners of the ir experience with the ling to one of these genchbold the same who >-president of the Stanich office he now holds ad heard of the scheme larmed by the rumor, dent refiners had attempted to investigate, but could learn nothing until they had given a promise not to reveal what was told them. When convinced that a company had been formed actually strong enough to force or persuade the railroads to give to it special rates and refuse them to all persons outside, Mr. Archbold said that he and his colleagues had gone to the railway kings to remonstrate, but all to no effect. The South Improvement Company by some means had convinced the railroads that they owned the Oil Regions, producers and refiners both, and that hereafter no oil of any account would be shipped except as they shipped it. Mr. Archbold and his partners had been asked to join the company, but had refused, declaring that the whole business was iniquitous, that they would fight it to the end, and that in their fight they would have the backing of the oil men, as a whole. They excused their silence up to this time by citing the pledge* exacted from them before they were informed of the extent and nature of the South Improvement Company.

The "Derrick's" Blacklist

Naturally the burning question throughout the Oil Region, convinced as it was of the iniquity of the scheme, was: who are the conspirators? Whether the gentlemen concerned regarded themselves in the light of "conspirators" or not, they seem from the first to have realized that it would be discreet not to be identified publicly with the scheme, and to have allowed one name alone to appear in all signed negotiations. This was the name of the president, Peter H. Watson. However anxious the members of the South Improvement Company were that Mr. Watson should combine the honors of president with the trials of scapegoat, it was impossible to keep their names concealed. The Oil City Derrick, at

Two forms of these pledges were published at the time. See MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE for December, 1902.

that time one of the most vigorous, witty, and daring newspapers in the country, began a blacklist at the head of its editorial columns the day after the raise in freights was announced, and it kept it there until it was believed complete. It stood finally as follows: THE BLACK LIST.

P. H. WATSON, PRES. S. 1. Co. Charles Lockhart,

W. P. Logan,

R, S. Waring,

A. W. Bostwick, W. G. Warden, John Rockefeller,

Amasa Stone.

These seven are given as the Direetors of the Southern Improvement Company. They are refiners or merchants of petroleum

Atlantic & Gt. W'cstern Railway.

L. S. & M. S. Railway. Philadelphia & Eric Railway. Pennsylvania Central Railway New York Central Railway. Erie Railway.

Behold "The Anaconda" in all his hideous deformity!

This list was not exact,* but it was enough to go on, and the oil blockade, to which the Petroleum Producer's Union had pledged itself, was now enforced against the firms listed, and as far as possible against the railroads. All of these refineries had their buyers on the Creek, and although several of the buyers were young men generally liked for their personal and business qualities, no mercy was shown them. They were refused oil by everybody, though they offered from seventy-five cents to a dollar more than the market price. They were ordered at one meeting "to desist from their nefarious business or leave the Oil Region," and when they declined they were invited to resign from the Oil Exchanges of which they were members. So strictly, indeed, was the blockade enforced that in Cleveland the refineries were closed and meetings for the relief of the workmen were held. In spite of the excitement there was little vandalism, the only violence at the opening of the war being at Franklin, where a quantity of the oil belonging to Mr. Watson was run on the ground.

*See MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE for December, 1902, for stockholders of the South Improvement Company, and list of railroads signing contracts with the Company.