Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/driver00garrgoog THE DRIVER by GARET GARRETT Author of “The Blue Wound,” etc. [Illustration: Logo] New York E. P. Dutton & Company 681 Fifth Avenue Copyright, 1922 By E. P. Dutton & Company All Rights Reserved First printing, September, 1922 Second printing, October, 1922 Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. PHANTASMA 1 II. THE FUNK IDOL 32 III. GALT 63 IV. AN ECONOMIC NIGHTMARE 86 V. VERA 99 VI. A GIANT IN BABY SWEAT 115 VII. DARING THE DARK 131 VIII. LOW WATER 136 IX. FORTH HE GOES 139 X. HEYDAY 162 XI. HEARTH NOTES 180 XII. A BROKEN SYMBOL 198 XIII. SUCCESS 213 XIV. THE COMBAT 226 XV. THE HEIGHTS 257 XVI. GATE OF ENIGMA 285 XVII. NATALIE 293 THE DRIVER CHAPTER I PHANTASMA i It is Easter Sunday in the village of Massillon, Stark County, Ohio, fifty miles south by east from Cleveland. Fourth year of the soft Money Plague; 1894. Time, about 10 o’clock. The sky is low and brooding, with an untimely thought of snow. Church bells are ringing. They sound remote and disapproving. Almost nobody is mindful of their call. The soul may miss its feast; the eye of wonder shall not be cheated. The Comic God has published a decree. Here once more the sad biped, solemn, ludicrous and romantic, shall mount the gilded ass. It is a spectacle that will not wait. For weeks in all the newspapers of the country the fact has been advertised in a spirit of waggery. At this hour and from this place the Army of the Commonweal of Christ will set forth on foot in quest of the Economic Millennium. The village is agog with people congregating to witness the fantasied event. In the main street natives and strangers mingle their feet gregariously. There are spasmodic sounds of laughter, retort, argument and ribaldry; and continually the shrill cries of youth in a frenzy of expectation. Buggies, two-wheelers, open carts and spring wagons line both sides of the street. The horses are blanketed. A damp, chill wind is blowing. Vendors from Chicago, lewd-looking men, working a hundred feet apart, are yelling: “Git a Christ army button here fer a nickel!” There is a composite smell of ham sandwiches, peanuts, oranges and cigars. A shout rises at the far end of the street. The crowd that has been so thick there, filling the whole space, bursts open. A band begins playing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and the spectacle is present. First comes a negro bearing the American flag.