June 6, 1883. Jed was taken sick to-day with a pain in his stomach. He seems very weak. The old man won’t last long.March, 1887. The old man’s stomach is bothering him again. He has to stay in bed right along.September 2, 1892. Abbie Grant says Uncle Jed’s pain is worse. He’s not long for this world.July, 1895. That pain in Uncle Jed’s insides still hangs on. It will be the death of him.August 2, 1898. Deborah Grant was here to-day. The old man still breathes.May, 1900. Uncle Jed is still alive and kicking.
June 6, 1883. Jed was taken sick to-day with a pain in his stomach. He seems very weak. The old man won’t last long.
March, 1887. The old man’s stomach is bothering him again. He has to stay in bed right along.
September 2, 1892. Abbie Grant says Uncle Jed’s pain is worse. He’s not long for this world.
July, 1895. That pain in Uncle Jed’s insides still hangs on. It will be the death of him.
August 2, 1898. Deborah Grant was here to-day. The old man still breathes.
May, 1900. Uncle Jed is still alive and kicking.
When I had finished reading these items aloud, Chet drew his chin back against his neck and laughed with that robust vigor which is characteristic of him; and I, without at all understanding the jest, nevertheless laughed in sympathy.
“But it seems to me,” I suggested, “that the record ends here a bit abruptly. What happened to the old man, anyway?”
“That was old Uncle Jed Grant,” Chet told me, tears of mirth in his eyes. “I could tell you things about Uncle Jed that ’u’d surprise you.”
Mrs. McAusland called from the kitchen to warn me that if I didn’t look out I’d get Chet started; but I reassured her, and bade Chet tellon. That which follows is the substance of his telling.
This Jedidiah Grant, so Chet assured me, was by all odds the meanest man that ever dwelt in Fraternity, where to be mean and to be miserly are synonymous.
“Why,” said Chet, “he was so mean he wouldn’t let you see him laugh; fear it ’u’d tickle you.” And he began to chuckle at some recollection, so that it was necessary to spur him before he would go on.
“I was thinking,” he explained, “of the time Jed went down to Boston. Went to turn some gold into greenbacks. This was after the war, when the greenbacks was ’way down. Jed had made some money boot-legging in Bangor, and he see a chance to make some more. Trip didn’t cost him a thing, because a couple of Boston men asked him to come down.”
He had met these men in Bangor, it appeared.
“They ’lowed I uz a side-show,” Jed told Chet. “I knowed they thought so, but long as they paid my way, I didn’t mind. Went along down and did my business at the bank. Then they took me to supper at a tavern and tried to git me drunk; got drunk theirselves. Then we went to a show. Say, Chet, they was the funniest man in that show I ever see. I set between these two, and they kep’ a-looking at me, and I was like to bust, I wanted to laugh so bad. I never did see such a funny man. But I didn’t much as grin; it near killed me. Say, when I gotinto bed that night, I like’ to died laughing, just thinking about him. But they didn’t know that.”
“I asked him,” Chet explained, “why he didn’t want to laugh in the theater, and he says, ‘I wouldn’t give them two that much satisfaction.’ So he saved it up till he got alone. That’s how mean he was.”
This man had been born in Fraternity, and his brother Nehemiah and his sisters Abigail and Deborah always lived in the town. No one of them was ever to marry. They were dwelling together in the house where their father and mother had lived when Jed came back to Fraternity and settled down to a business in usury, lending out money on iron-clad notes, and collecting on the nail. He was a timorous man, forever fearful lest by force or by stealth he be robbed of the tin box of paper that represented his fortune; therefore he hid the box ingeniously, sharing the secret with no living man.
Jed was already old, and his sixtieth birthday came in 1881. He had bought a little hillside farm, where he lived alone; but in that year his loneliness became oppressive to him, and he sought out his brother ’Miah with a proposal that he had carefully planned.
Before ’Miah’s eyes old Jed spread out all the kingdoms of the world. That is to say, he showed his brother the tin box of notes, showed all his wealth to the other man. He was worth at this time twenty thousand dollars, a fortune in Fraternity.
“It’s this a-way, ’Miah,” he explained. “I’m a-getting old, and mighty feeble sometimes. Can’t do for myself like I used. I could hire somebody to take care of me, but that don’t look just right. Seems like what I got ought to stay in the family, ’Miah. Don’t it look that way to you?”
It did. ’Miah had no love for his brother; there was no basis for any such love, since Jed had gouged him as hungrily as he had gouged other men. Nevertheless, there was in Jed’s money a powerful conciliatory factor, and ’Miah, though weaker, was as avaricious as the older man. He asked:
“What are you heading at, anyway?”
“This here, ’Miah,” Jed replied. “You come on over here and fix to live with me and look out for me. You’re younger than I be, and I ain’t a well man, anyway. You do for me long as I live, and I’ll fix it so you heir my prop’ty. Ain’t that a right fair thing?”
’Miah did not consider over-long. The duties proposed to him were burdensome, but the rewards were proportionately great. He did insist on a formal will, which Jed drew and signed and delivered into ’Miah’s custody. Thereafter the younger brother moved from the home farm, leaving the sisters to dwell there alone with a hired man for help, and came to live with the old miser.
Jed began almost at once to prosper on this care. He contributed to the support of the household nothing whatever.
“’Tain’t in the bargain,” he insisted when ’Miah complained. “And, besides,” he added, “all I got is a-going to come to you.” He contributed nothing, yet demanded everything: victuals of his choice and plenty of them, the daily paper to read, and a regular allowance of gin. He demanded these things, and got them. Passers used to see him sitting in the sun before the house door, as slothful as a serpent, his little black eyes twisting this way and that in a beady fashion that completed the likeness. He had been spare and thin; he began to put on flesh. But as the angles of his frame became more rounded, the edges of his tongue became keener, and he cut ’Miah with sharp words day by day.
’Miah was a spineless man; nevertheless the hour came when he rebelled. It is impossible to say how this ultimate dissension was begun; the sources of such quarrels are often lost in the flood of recriminations which arise from them. ’Miah, in a futile, shrill-voiced manner, lost his temper, but Jed did not. The older man goaded the other with edged words, observing with malign amusement his brother’s rising anger, till ’Miah suddenly became silent, turned away, and without word began to gather his few belongings. Jed, having watched him for a time, asked:
“What you a-doing, ’Miah?”
“I got enough of you,” ’Miah told him, sullenly. “I’m going back home.”
Persisting in a stubborn silence, he continued his preparations all that morning; and Jed, at first jeering and incredulous, was forced to accept the other’s intentions. It was in this crisis that he conceived the artifice that was to become a part of his life. ’Miah, in the bedroom, heard Jed groan; he paid no heed, and his brothergroaned again. This time the younger man came to the door and looked at Jed, suspiciously. The miser was bent forward in his chair, hugging himself and groaning more and more. ’Miah asked petulantly:
“What’s the matter with you?” And Jed gasped, as though in agony:
“Git Doctor Crapo, ’Miah. I’m a-dying. I got a turrible pain in my stummick.”
’Miah studied him; he said incredulously:
“It’s belly-ache.”
Jed wagged his wicked old head and groaned again.
“All right, ’Miah; but git the doctor, anyhow. I’m a-dying, sure.”
There was always a chance that this might be true. ’Miah sent for the doctor, and Doctor Crapo, a young man then and not so wise as he would later be, questioned Jed, and took pulse and temperature, and said with some solemnity:
“I don’t know. You’ve got no fever, but your heart is jumpy. I guess—Well, you’re getting along, you know. If this pain is what you say, it’s just the beginning of one of those ailments that come on old men sometimes. Nothing I can do for it at your age.”
“It’s a-killing me,” Jed pleaded weakly, and the doctor said:
“Well, I can physic you, of course; but if it’s just a stomach-ache, it will stop anyway, and if it’s something worse, physic won’t do a bit of good.”
“This ain’t no stummick-ache,” said Jed and groaned again.
The doctor nodded, and he and ’Miah went out of the room together. ’Miah took this chance to ask:
“How about it, Doc?”
“May be bad,” the doctor told him. “Looks like the beginning of one of those torturing deaths that some men die. Months, maybe years, of that pain, getting worse all the time. And—his heart is bad.”
“He’ll maybe die?”
“Might go any time,” said Doctor Crapo, and drove away.
Now, this was in 1883. Chet McAusland had recorded the first appearance of that pain in the old note-book that I still held in my hand. The effect of Jed’s artifice was that ’Miah did not, after all, desert his brother. Actuated by the avaricious thought that since he had endured three years of servitude for no return, he might as well endure another period, now that the reward was in sight, he stayed on at the little hillside farm. The next spring he died and was laid away. Old Jed had read his brother well; he grinned to himself because he had been able to buy ’Miah’s services with empty promises and nothing more, and the incident gave him confidence. He lived for a few months alone.
But in 1885 Jed’s native sloth rebelled at the necessity for tending his own bodily needs, and he sent for his sister Abigail, who lived with Deborah on their father’s farm—sent for Abbie,and showed her, as he had showed ’Miah, that tin box of ugly treasure-trove.
“I’m a-getting feeble, Abbie,” he told her, plaintively. “I’m too old to do for myself.” With some inward appreciation of the satiric drama of the situation, he parroted the phrases he had used to ’Miah four years before. “I could hire somebody, but that don’t look right. What I got ought to stay in the family. You come and take care of me.”
This spinster sister was a humble little woman without strength or assertiveness; she yielded not from greed, but from lack of strength to resist his insistence, and so came to the farm upon the hill. Chet, telling the story, struck his fist upon his knee at the recollection.
“There’s nobody knows what he put her through, and Deborah after her,” he told me. “That old heathen had to have his own way or he’d raise holy Ned; and he got it. Abbie stood it longer than ’Miah; she never did kick up and threaten to leave him. But after two years she took sick and discouraged-like, and wanted to quit and go home. Then Jed he begun to say again how sick he was; made her fetch the doctor again.”
This time, it appeared, Doctor Crapo had been wholly convinced of the miser’s honesty.
“A pain like that,” he told Jed, “is always a sure sign. I’ve seen them go. Specially men that eat heavy, like you do, and that get fat as they go along. You’re going to have that pain the rest of your life, and worse all the time.”
Abbie was in the room, and Jed asked plaintively:
“Hev I got to suffer like this here for days and days, Doc?”
“Months, maybe years,” said the doctor, implacably.
Jed shook his head, turned wearily toward the wall.
“It ain’t a-going to be that long,” he assured them. “I can’t stand it so long as you say.”
Before this pitiable resignation, Abbie had neither the courage nor the selfishness to leave her brother alone; so she struggled on, tending the dying man. But five years later he was still alive, as venomous and as slothful as he had ever been, when Abigail at last gave way. She suffered what would have passed as a nervous breakdown in a woman of more sheltered life, and needed Jed’s care far more than he needed hers. When she would have taken to her bed, however, Jed kept stubbornly to his, so that she drove herself meekly to her round of tasks, and wept with the agony of tight-wrung nerves. It was release when, in the following spring, she died. Jed grinned at the fact that her years of service had brought her no reward at all, and the day after the funeral he sent for Deborah.
“By that time,” Chet assured me, “everybody in town knowed about Uncle Jed and this pain of his, and from now on he talked about it more. You stop to see him any day, and he’d groan andtake on in a way that ’u’d surprise you. He stayed in bed all the time, in a room all shut up tight, reading his papers and drinking his gin and eating all the time. Deborah took good care of him; she was that kind of a woman. She had backbone, but she was built to take care of folks, and half the town had had her in when folks was sick. There was times when she threatened to leave him, but she never did, him always saying he was about to die.”
There were skeptics, it appeared. Doctor Crapo himself was at last beginning to suspect the old miser’s play-acting.
“If he’d had that pain all this time,” he told Deborah, “he’d be howling with it night and day or dead long ago. He’s a lazy hound; that’s all, Miss Grant.”
But Deborah would not altogether be convinced, and when Jed heard the doctor’s words, he wagged his head and said pathetically:
“That’s what I git for bearing it so brave’. If I’d yell and take on, you’d believe me; but because I keep my mouth shut and stand these torments, you think I’m lying.”
So Deborah stayed with him. There was no avarice in her, but there was the instinct for service, and some trace of blood affection for this worthless brother, last of her kin alive. She gave him pitying and tender care, and the old man, in his slothful bed, fattened enormously, till it was scarcely possible for him to move at all. Yet in May, 1900, he was, as Chet had recorded, still alive and kicking; and in June of that year Deborah suddenly died.
This woman was loved in Fraternity, and with reason. To the funeral services in the little farmhouse came more men and women than could be crowded within doors. Jed, abed in the next room, listened to the minister’s slow and reverent words with a derisive grin. One or two people came in to speak to him, charitably, as people do at such hours. There was an element of martyrdom about the woman’s death that awed them, glorifying even the ugly ceremonies of the funeral.
Jed did not feel this at all. He was amusing himself with his own reflections, and as the service drew toward its end he became so absorbed in his own thoughts that he was not aware when the stirring of feet marked the departure of the little cortège. The last man and the last woman left the house to follow what was left of Deborah to her grave, and five minutes after they were gone Jed realized that he was alone.
Not at first sure of this, he called out; but no one answered. When he knew that he would not be overheard, the fat man began to chuckle and shake with mirth at thought of how he had tricked his brother and sisters; how, trading upon their avarice and their faint love for him, he had bought their lives with empty promises, never to be fulfilled.
But after a little this amusement passed; it gave way to a desire to talk to some one, share this jest with them. He called out once more, but no answer came to his call.
The realization that he was in fact utterly alone, the abrupt possibility that hereafter he would always be alone, with no tender hands to serve him, startled the old man, and somewhat affrighted him. He was aware of a tremor of fear at the prospect of the loneliness that lay ahead, and because he wished to reassure himself, give evidence that power still dwelt in him, he decided to get out of bed.
With some effort he pushed away the heavy coverlets with which he was accustomed to swaddle his vast body, and tried to swing his feet to the floor, lift his bulk from the bed. He struggled for an instant, then fell back with white face and staring eyes, and the sweat of fear upon his forehead.
For the first time in his life he had suddenly been stricken with a terrific pain in his bowels. He had never suffered this agony before, yet knew it for what it was; knew it for one of those shafts of anguish that presage months or years of torment, with no relief save a torturous death at the end.
He whispered, with stiff and horror-stricken lips, “I’m a-dying.” This time he spoke truth. He had, in fact, at last begun to die.
IMIGHT begin with a recital of the conversation that led up to his remark; but Chet has taught me the value of selection, the importance of elimination, by the way he has of setting before me just such a curt and poignant drama as this one was. “The last time I had a fight,” said Chet, “was with a boy that was my best friend.”
We had been in the alder swamps and across the birch knolls all that day after woodcock and partridge, tramping the countryside in a flood of autumn sunshine that was more stimulating than any of man’s concoctions; had brought home a partridge or two, and our fair allotment of woodcock; and had dined thereafter on other birds, killed three days before, which had been hanging since then in the cool of the deep cellar. Now our dogs were asleep upon the rugs at our feet; our pipes were going; and the best hour of the day was come.
“What did you fight about?” I asked.
“Fishing,” Chet told me. “We used to always fish Marsh Brook, where you and I went last summer. Where you caught the big trout in that hole in the woods. Remember?”
I nodded. The memory was very sweetly clear.
“That brook starts way in behind the mountain,” Chet reminded me. “It swings down through the old meadow and into the woods, and through the lower meadow there, and finally it runs into Marsh River. There weren’t the trout in it then that there are now. It’s been stocked right along, the last few years.... But there were trout there, even then. If I told you the fish I’ve seen my father take out of some of those holes, it would surprise you.”
“It’s a beautiful brook,” I agreed.
“Jim and I always used to fish it,” Chet went on. “When we started in, we’d draw lots to see who’d take the first hole, and then take turns after that. He took a pebble in one hand, this day; and I picked the hand that had the pebble in it, so I had the choice. And we started up the brook, me fishing the hole under that log above the bridge, and him fishing the next bend where the bank has all fell in and spoiled the hole, years ago. And I fished under the big rock below the fence; and so on.
“Jim was a fellow that loved fishing,” Chet continued; and I interrupted long enough to ask:
“Jim who?”
“Jim Snow,” said Chet. “He loved fishing, and he liked getting into the woods. He was a boy that always played a lot of games with himself, in his imagination. We were only about ten years old. And this day he was an Indian. You could see it in the way he walked, and the way he crawled around, except when he got excited and forgot. There was always a change in him when we climbed up out of the lower meadowinto the real woods. He’d begin to whisper, and his eyes to shine. And he’d talk to the trout in the pools; and he was always seeing wildcat, or moose, or bear, in the deeps of the woods.
“I never knew any one it was more fun to go around the country with than Jim.”
He was still for a moment, tasting the sweets of memory; and he chuckled to himself before he spoke again.
“Well,” he said, “we come up out of the meadow into the woods. You’ve fished there. It’s the best part of the brook now, and it was then. My winning when we drew lots in the beginning made it my turn to fish when we came to the big hole. And Jim knew it as well as me.” He chuckled again. “You know the hole I mean. Where that old gray birch leans out over.”
I did know. The brook ran through the heart of a grove of old first growth pine; and the big hole itself was dark and shadowed. The water dropped into it over a ledge a few inches high; spread wide and deep upon a clear and sandy bottom, and spilled out at the foot of the hole over the gravel bar. There was an old pine on one bank, at the upper end, leaning somewhat over the water; and on the opposite side of the brook, a huge gray birch leaned to meet the pine. Except on sunny days, the spot was gloomy. More than once I heard great owls hooting in muffled tones among those pines; and the number and ferocity of the mosquitoes which dwell thereabouts is unbelievable.
“It hasn’t changed much, all this time,” Chet went on. “That slough on the west bank, in thatspring hole, was there then, the same as it is now. Maybe you’ve noticed an old stub, rotting away, right beside that slough. That was a blasted hemlock; and it’s been dead a long time. Wind, or lightning, or something knocked it down.
“When we came up to that hole that day, I was on the side toward the pine; and I crept in behind the big tree that leaned out over, and swung my line in, and I had a bite right away. But I jerked too soon; didn’t set the hook. And the line whished up and snarled in the branches over my head.”
He laughed to himself at the recollection, his head back, his chin down upon his neck, deep-set eyes twinkling beneath his bushy eyebrows in the fashion I like to see. “Well, sir,” he chuckled, “while I was untangling my line, I heard a regular Indian hoot, and I turned around and see Jim had caught a fish out of my pool. Quicker than a minute, I was mad as a hat.
“Yes, sir. I didn’t stop for a thing. He was on the other side, by that old hemlock; and I went after him. I waded right across the ledge, running, and when he saw me coming, he jumped to meet me. Because he knew I was mad. We come together right in the black mire of that spring hole; and let me tell you, for a minute the fur flew. I guess we fought there in them woods, nobody within a mile of us, for as much as five minutes, maybe. Both of us grunting and cussing with every lick. Knee deep in that stiff, black mud. And first I’d get him down in it, and then he’d down me; and finally, when we kind of stopped for breath, he yells:
“‘I was only catching the fish for you, anyway, Chet.’
“And I says: ‘I’ll catch my own trout!’ And I managed to roll him under, and by that time we were both too tired to do any more.”
He tilted back in his chair, and we laughed together at the picture he had drawn of two wet, mad, and muddy boys. “Rolled in that mud, till we were smeared with it,” he said. And: “Didn’t speak to each other till it come time to eat lunch and we remembered we’d left it at the big hole.” He had laughed till there were tears in his eyes. Now the mirth passed; and by and by he sighed aloud, said wistfully:
“Ah, well. Poor old Jim. He drank himself to death. Died of the D T’s.”
The words were like a shock of cold water; I shivered as though the winds of tragedy had blown upon me. In my thoughts I had been seeing this Jim Snow; freckled, and covered with mud, and fighting so long as he had breath to fight; and protesting in hurt at the end: “I was only catching the fish for you.” A likeable boy, Jim Snow.... And in an instant the picture was shattered; there stood in its place the apparition of a dreadful, sodden, wrecked and ruined man.... The thing was horribly abrupt.
“For God’s sake, Chet,” I protested.
“Yes,” he said soberly. “Yes.”
I tried by a callous tone to insulate myselfagainst the impinging tragedy. “Went to the devil?” I hazarded.
“I guess his father drove him to it, ruined him,” Chet explained. “There wasn’t any harm in Jim. Just a mischievous boy, full of high spirits and fun, like a colt. His father was a churchly man; a religious man. A sober man. And he used to beat Jim, for his pranks, awfully.” He shook his head, seemed faintly to shudder at the recollection. “I’ve seen him take Jim out into the barn; and I’ve heard Jim yell. Yell and screech. ‘Oh, father! Father!’”
My tongue seemed sticking in my mouth. I made a brave show of refilling my pipe; the cheery flame of the match seemed to lighten the dark shadows that oppressed us both. Chet laughed again, mindful of a new incident. One of these practical jokes boys have played since there were boys to play them. But as Chet told it, tragedy overhung the tale.
“His father was a cobbler,” he explained. “A good one, too. He used to make a good living out of his shop. Had a big family, and they did well. Time Jim begun to be able to work, he used to work in the shop, helping.”
He warmed to his tale. “There was a bench, by the counter,” he continued. “Folks used to sit down there when they had to wait. Jim was always up to something; and one day when his father was at home, Jim took a gimlet and bored a little hole in that bench. Then he fixed a brad under that hole, with a spring, and a string on it. And he took this string under the counter and back to the seat where he used to be when he was working. He fixed it with a piece of wood, like a trigger, there.”
Chet, spreading his arms wide, illustrated the motion which a cobbler makes in drawing his thread through the leather. “When his arm went out like that,” he said, “he could just reach this piece of wood. And when someone was sitting on the bench, some times he’d just give it a rap; and the brad would come up through and stick into them, and they’d get up in a hurry, I want to tell you.”
“He couldn’t do that when his father was around,” I suggested.
“He never did but once,” Chet agreed. “One day a boy came in that Jim didn’t like. I was there that day; and I knew about this thing Jim had fixed up; and when the other boy sat down on the bench, I kind of tipped my head to Jim. I was sorry about that, after; because Jim was never one to be dared. His father was there; but Jim winked back at me, and then he gave that wooden trigger a good hard poke, and he must have rammed that brad into the boy pretty hard, because he come right up into the air, holding on to himself and yowling.”
He slapped his knee at the memory. “Well, sir, he danced around there like a crazy man. I remember his name was Elnathan Hodge. He danced around and he yelled; and Jim’s father stood there looking at him and frowning awfully, so that I was scared, and I edged over toward the door. Jim’s father just stood, waiting for the boy to quiet down. He was a stern, solemn man; and his voice used to be enough to make us boys tremble.
“By and by he said, slow and steady: ‘What’s the matter with you, Elnathan?’
“And Elnathan says: ‘Jim stuck a needle into me.’
“The old man looked from him to Jim, and Jim was mighty busy, sewing on a sole.
“‘How did he stick a needle into you, Elnathan?’ says the old man. And Elnathan pointed to the bench. He was a big boy, bigger than us; but he was always kind of a sissy. That’s why we never liked him.
“‘Right up through that hole, it come,’ he told Jim’s father.”
“A nice boy, Elnathan!” I commented.
“Jim and me licked him for it afterwards,” Chet explained. “But that didn’t do a bit of good then. The old man went and looked under the bench and saw where the string went through under the counter; and then he followed it out through the shop to the back. He took his time about it, never looking toward Jim, pretending not to know he was there, like a cat with a hurt bird. Traced the string all back till he come to where Jim was sitting. And he didn’t say a word then, but just reached down and got Jim by the collar and started for the back room, dragging Jim after him; and Jim’s heels were clattering on the floor. After he’d shut the door, we heard the first whacks of the strap he kept there, and heard Jim yell; and then me and Elnathan put out the front door and ran away. And we could hear Jim yelling, begging....”
He broke off abruptly, shaking his head in sorrow at the recollection. “Poor old Jim!” he murmured, under his breath. For an interval we were silent; and then I suggested that Jim’s father must have done what he thought best for the boy.
Chet would not accept this suggestion. “He knew better,” he said. “Any man knows better. There ought to be friendliness between a man and his son. My father used to take me fishing with him, but Jim was afraid of his father, and kept away from him, except when he had to work in the shop.”
“Yet I’ll bet your father tanned your hide, Chet,” I argued.
Chet laughed at that. “Sure he did. But there are ways of licking a boy.” He snapped his fingers to Frenchy, and the setter came to lay his chin upon Chet’s knee. Reck, jealous of this attention, at once rose and demanded a caress from me. “Take a dog,” said Chet. “You lick him to hurt, so he yelps with the pain of it, and the helplessness, and you can make a rogue dog out of him mighty quick. A pain that breaks down the pride of a man, or a boy, or a dog, and makes him beg for mercy, does bitter things to him. Man, or boy, or dog, he’s not what he was, after that has happened to him. I’ve known dog breakers that whipped dogs, and made rogues or cowards out of them. And that’s what Jim’s father did to him.”
He filled his pipe, slowly, wedging the crumbled tobacco firmly down. “Jim used to go fishing with me and father, till his father stopped him,” he said. “Then he used to run away and go with me.” He chuckled, shamefacedly, “I remember one of those times, the first time he ever got drunk, I guess.” There was something like guilt in his countenance. “We’d been fishing in the rain, all morning; and when it come time to eat our lunch, Jim pulled out a little bottle. I asked him what it was, and he said: ‘It’s gin!’
“He’d got it out of a big bottle his father had. ‘I filled the bottle up with water,’ he told me. ‘So he’ll never know.’ We were soaking wet; and we sat straddling a log that had fallen across the brook, and finished that bottle between us. There couldn’t have been much more than half a pint. We drank it, and then we began to sing; and Jim was wilder than me. He got up to stand on the log, and fell off on his back in the water; and I went to pull him out and he pulled me in. The gin didn’t hit me the way it did him. I didn’t like it; and I only took a mouthful or two; but it got hold of Jim.
“He was seventeen years old, then; and getting big for his age. But his father beat him awfully for that. The gin and water didn’t mix, so he saw someone had got at his bottle. But that was the last time he beat Jim. Jim got mad that time, and grabbed up an axe; and I guess it kind of worried and frightened the old man.”
We puffed at our pipes in silence for a little while; and one of the dogs rose to lay his chin upon my knee. “I can’t help feeling sorry for his father, too,” I said at last.
Chet nodded. “He was wrong all the time,” he replied. “But no one ever regretted it more, when it was too late, and he saw what he had done to Jim.” He was still for a moment, then wrote a swift “finis” to the tale.
“The last time I saw Jim,” he said, “was down on the wharf at East Harbor. He was drunk that day, and his father and his brother Charley were trying to get him home. Jim was a big man then; and when he was drunk, he was strong as a bull. I remember he took Charley around the waist and threw him right off the edge of the wharf into the mud flats, and Charley landed on his face in them.
“His father tried to catch Jim’s arm, and Jim turned around and hit him in the mouth and mashed his lips so they bled, and knocked him down.
“That seemed to sober Jim a little, and he sat down with his back against a pile and cried; and his father got up and came and was kneeling down with his arm around Jim; and he was crying, too. They were both crying. And it may have been the drink in Jim; but the old man hadn’t been drinking.
“That’s the last time I ever saw him. Crying there, with his father. Probably they both saw, then, how bad things had gone.
“But it was too late for anything to change Jim. The next year, I think it was, he died.”
BARNARD became conscious that he was dreaming. It was a bad dream, a nightmare.
He had been dreaming for a long time; but at first he had not understood that it was all a dream. It had been too real. When he realized that it was only a dream, he began, as dreamers do, to fight for wakefulness. But sleep held him stubbornly.
His dream was long; it dragged interminably. An endless procession of scenes and events harassed his troubled slumbers. He appeared in these scenes, participated in these events. He was at the same time an actor in his dream, and a spectator.
Some portions of the dream were gay, some were somber; some were happy, some were tragic. But over gay and somber, happy and tragic, there hung an uneasy Cloud. It haunted and harassed him. He tried to escape from this dark Cloud, but he could not. Thus his dream was one long, futile struggle....
When the dream began, Barnard seemed in it to be a boy. Yet as an actor in the dream, he felt himself neither boy nor man, simply James Barnard. He was—identity. He was himself.
It was in one of the earliest scenes of his dream that he first discovered the threatening Cloud which was to shadow all the rest.
He seemed to be running desperately after an omnibus, with a door in its rear end. He pursued it at the height of his speed; and yet it drew continually further away, and at length disappeared, in a hazy fashion, at a great distance from him. When at last he abandoned the pursuit, his chest seemed like to burst with his labored breathing.
Two faces looked back at him from the rear windows of this omnibus; and a hand waved through the open door. And above the omnibus, smoothly, and without effort, moved a faint shadow of misty Cloud. It seemed to Barnard to grow darker as the omnibus drew further and further away; and when the vehicle disappeared, the Cloud remained for a moment in his sight before it, too, vanished. There was something menacing about this drifting mist. Barnard thought of it, in his dream, as The Threat.
When the omnibus was gone, he remembered the faces which had looked back at him, and recognized them. His mother, and his brother. His brother was a baby.
Barnard, in his dream, felt an overpowering terror at this recognition, and he shuddered.
Then that misty, shadowy picture was gone, and another took its place.
He saw himself at home, sitting in a low chair before a coal fire, with his chin in his hand. His Aunt Joan stood beside him. She was crying, and she kept patting his head.
“You’re a brave boy, not to cry,” she said tohim, over and over. “You’re a brave boy not to cry.”
At the same time, she wept bitterly.
Barnard, in his dream, had no desire to cry. He was puzzled and uneasy; he groped for understanding.
Understanding came with a last glimpse of the baby’s face in the omnibus, and The Threat gliding above, and then he saw in his dream a bit of yellow paper, and on it, written in a long, flowing, telegrapher’s hand, the words:
“Rob died today at noon.”
He understood that Rob was his baby brother; and he understood, from that time forward, the nature of The Threat....
Thus, his dream, even while he was still a boy in it, was always disturbing and perplexing. He was uneasy, rebellious. He chafed and suffered and could not find relief. The dream world was hostile and mocking, full of inscrutable forces which were stronger than himself.
But he could not wake up. The dream dragged him inexorably onward. He was like a man bound to the stirrup of a horse, jerked forward constantly, and meeting each instant new blows and pains.
Abruptly, at length, as when at dawn the sun strikes low and sweet across the dewy fields, the complexion of his dream was altered. He smiled in his sleep, and he felt warm and comforted. Hedid not know why this was so, and at first he did not care.
He had been conscious that his dreams were of a more pleasant hue for some time before he discovered that this new aspect was shared with him by another. A girl.
He saw her very plainly, and there was something familiar about her, and at the same time something baffling. He felt that he ought to recognize her, that he ought to know her name. He tried to remember it, but he could not.
So he set this problem aside, and gave himself up to enjoyment of the dream with her. He could see no more of her than her face, her eyes. They were near each other, yet aloof. Their hands never touched, they never spoke; yet their eyes met frequently.
He had at first no desire to approach this girl more than closely; and she, also, seemed content to go forward with him, side by side, near, yet not together.
After a time, the mists cleared a little, and he saw that they were passing through a pleasant, rolling meadow. Her feet followed a little pathway; and when he looked down, he saw that his feet, also, were set upon a path.
He felt his father and mother somewhere near him, but he could not see them. He could only see the girl.
Suddenly, he perceived that his path and the path the girl followed drew ever nearer together. This frightened him; but when he looked toward the girl and saw that she, too, was a little frightened, he smiled reassuringly, and waved his handto her, and went boldly forward along the way that was before him.
The girl had hesitated, but when she saw him go forward, she no longer faltered. She moved with him.
Their paths met at a little turnstile in a fence. Their paths met there, and they met there.
For a moment, they looked at each other. Then their eyes went forward through the next field. There were no longer two paths before them. In the next field, there was but one. Either they must now go forward together, or one of them must fall behind forever.
So they clasped hands and passed through the stile.
The field disappeared. The girl stood beside him, her right hand in his right hand, her eyes turned up to his. Her eyes were deep, his were lost in them.
A voice spoke, resonantly, in measured words. He heard his own voice; then the girl’s.
Suddenly he recognized the girl. She was Anne; she was his wife....
They went forward singing, for a little way. Their hands were lightly clasped. The girl skipped and danced beside him; and though he walked sedately, his heart sang and danced with hers.
Then he felt a damp chill in the air, and Anne drew closer to his side, and she no longer danced.
At first he did not understand; but when helooked about them, and then up into the skies, he saw the misty Cloud, The Threat....
He had forgotten the very existence of this Cloud; and he rebelled furiously at its coming now. But it paid no heed to him. It hung not over his strong head, but over the head of Anne, his wife.
Anne saw him looking up at it, and she lifted her head to see what he had seen; but he drew her eyes quickly away so that she should not understand, and with ice at his heart he went forward, watching the thing above them.
He began to reach upward, behind Anne’s back, and try to thrust The Threat away; but it was beyond his reach. It hung relentlessly above Anne’s head, and he could not touch it. He strove, he stood on tiptoe, he pleaded....
Anne turned and saw him; and she dropped her hand on his arm and reassured him. But when he looked into her eyes, he saw the reflection of The Threat there.
Nevertheless, they went bravely forward, shoulders touching; and when presently the Cloud descended and cloaked them so that he could not see Anne, he still held her hand, and they spoke to each other through the shadows.
Then the Cloud lifted, and when Barnard looked down, he saw a little child walking by Anne’s side, holding her hand.
He forgot The Threat in the air above them, and took the other hand of the child, and hurried forward....
Thereafter, the threatening Cloud was never out of their sight. At times it hung low above them, at times its cold fingers touched them; and in the intervals it rode high above their heads, distant, but relentless.
His dream was a constant apprehension; he kept a persistent vigil against The Threat, even while his heart told him it was a hopeless one.
When the Cloud hung low above them, he cast his arms about Anne and the child until the mists lifted again. Once, when this happened, and when they started forward once more, he found that not one boy-child, but two walked between Anne and him. Their hands were clasped, and Anne held the hand of one, and he of the other, so that they four went forward together, each helping each.
Their path was rocky and beset. The Threat never left them; and stones rose to trip them, and thorny bushes clutched at them from either side....
For a long time, in his dream, he always felt his father and his mother near at hand. Sometimes their fingers touched his. Sometimes, his father’s firm clasp lifted him over an obstacle in the way; and sometimes his mother’s smile tried to smooth away the bruises he encountered in the path.
His mother and his father loved to cast their arms about the two children, while he and Anne watched proudly.
While they all stood thus one day, The Threat descended upon them, lightly, gently; and thereafter Barnard was unable to find his father or his mother. He looked for them and could not see them; but at times he seemed to hear their voices, speaking to him....
The Threat in the air seemed to mock him; and he perceived that it would never leave him. He must walk forever in its shadow, till he should awake.
A great throng of memories roared down upon him; their wings buffeted his head. They were memories of things he might have done and had not done; of things he had done of which there was no need. They concerned his father and his mother, and they tormented him.
Then Anne’s hand lay lightly on his arm, and he was mysteriously comforted and reassured.
Once another child came to walk with them. This child was very little, and it walked between his two tall sons, and they held it by the hands and guided its stumbling and uncertain steps.
This child laughed easily, and when it laughed, they laughed with it, because they could not help themselves.
In his dream, Barnard forgot for a moment The Threat which drifted above them, and he began to sing, and Anne sang with him. And the three boys, his sons, laughed as he and Anne sang. Their voices were like peals of music.
Then something brushed Barnard’s cheek, andbefore he could stir, The Threat had engulfed them all. It crushed down upon them, stifling and smothering and blinding them.
He fumbled desperately through this Cloud, seeking the others. He found Anne, and they clung together, and groped about....
“Here is Dick,” she called, and laid the hand of his eldest son in his; and a moment later he felt a straight, youthful shoulder, and when he peered through the mists, he saw that he had found Charles, the second son, and he called to Anne, as she had called to him:
“Here is Charles!”
They were glad at that; and they went more hopefully at their task of finding the little child; but while they were still searching, the Cloud lifted, and they saw that the little boy was gone.
Barnard, in his dream, began to feel old; and he began to feel lonely.
He missed the laughter of the little child. Even though Anne, and Dick, and Charles still walked with him, he missed the little child.
He could see in Anne’s eyes that she, too, was lonely, but when he taxed her with it, she gave him a gay denial.
The two boys, however, soon forgot. At first Barnard resented this; then he accepted it dumbly. Revolt was dying in him. He still went forward as steadily as before, but the old, fierce defiance no longer burned in his breast. He no longer sought to escape The Threat above them. He accepted its presence. Submission was born in him.
The Threat rode high and serene above their heads....
In his dream, he thought they went forward for a long time together, through the fields. There were not so many stones in their path, not so many thorns to snatch at them. Barnard took pleasure in lifting the stones and tossing them aside, and he found joy in lopping off the thorns. He was, in some measure, happy.
Then, one day, he spoke to Charles, and the lad did not hear him, did not reply.
He looked at the boy in surprise; and he saw that Charles was looking off across the field through which they passed. His eyes followed his son’s eyes, and fell upon a girl child walking in the field, a little way off.
She followed a path parallel to theirs, and she was answering Charles’ eyes with her own.
Barnard called to Charles again, more loudly; and this time the boy heard, and turned, and answered him. But his eyes went back to the girl as soon as he had answered.
Then suddenly, they came to a place where a narrow path led off from the broad one they were following, and went toward the girl’s path; and here Charles stopped. He looked along the narrow way.
“This is my path,” he said.
Anne did not understand. She put her arm around Charles’ shoulder. “No, son,” she said. “The broad way is ours.”
“Go on, Charles,” Barnard told his boy, impatiently. “The broad path, Charles. Go on.”
But their son shook his head stubbornly; and his eyes were meeting the eyes of the girl, across the field. Barnard started to protest in anger; but Anne looked at her son, and saw whither his eyes led; and she followed his eyes and saw the girl.
The girl smiled at Anne, very humbly and beseechingly; and Anne put her hand to her throat and trembled.
Then she turned to Barnard, nodding ever so little; and she reached up to brush back a lock of hair upon the forehead of her tall son, and she buttoned a button of his coat.
“Go bravely, Charles,” she whispered. “Good-by.”
He kissed her hurriedly. “I’ll be back,” he promised. “I’m not going far away from you.”
Anne shook her head wistfully; but Charles was already running down the narrow path and did not see; and when Dick shouted after him, Charles did not hear.
They watched, and after a little they saw Charles and the girl come together; and presently their son and the strange girl went happily off across the meadow, out of their sight, hand in hand....
When Barnard, and Anne, and Dick went on, Barnard thought in his dream that he and Anne held Dick’s hands more tightly than before. And when, presently, he saw another girl, walkingalone upon a distant path, he caught Anne’s eye behind Dick’s back, and pointed this girl out to her.
Then he and Anne conspired against their son; they left the broad path for another, narrower. They pointed out to Dick the wonders of the way, and talked eagerly to him, and caressed him.
But after a time, they saw that the girl’s path had curved to follow them; and at length, while they spoke together, Dick turned to look back, and his eyes met the eyes of the girl....
Thereafter Barnard and Anne moved alone together; and though Barnard, in his dream, felt Anne’s hand in his, his heart ached with loneliness. Anne smiled bravely beside him, but her smile was worse than tears.
They seemed to have lost their path. They no longer went confidently along a broad way, but wandered aimlessly this way and that. They tried new paths that led nowhere; and there were times when they stood still, clinging each to each.
The Threat above them, Barnard saw, was floating lower.
In his dream, Barnard thought that he and Anne came to a path which followed the brink of a great precipice. They walked that way. His arm was about her, hers clasped him. She was talking very gaily; she had never been so beautiful.
Barnard forgot The Threat for a moment; and when uneasy recollection returned to him, and hiseyes sought for it, he saw that the cloudlike thing had descended till it rode level with them, and at one side, above the abyss at their left hand. It hung there, following them as they followed the brink of the precipice.
He was afraid, but he tried to tell himself this was a victory, that The Threat was leaving them; and he pointed it out to Anne. In his dream, he thought she looked up to him, and he saw pity in her eyes, and so he was more afraid than before.
He watched the cloudy thing more closely; and presently he saw that it was drifting toward them. So he caught Anne’s hand, and hurried her forward. She ran with him, as though to humor him; and she was speaking comfortingly to him as they ran.
The Cloud moved swiftly closer till it touched Anne. And her steps faltered. He could no longer persuade her to run. He could only throw his arms about her; and in his dream he shouted defiance at The Threat.
Then he pleaded with it....
Anne was being drawn from his arms. It was not that she was torn away; it was just that he could no longer hold her. The solid substance of her, to which he clung, melted in his arms. He tore off his coat and wrapped it about her, but still she slipped away like sand through the fingers.
He begged; and her face came toward him, and her lips touched his. Her fingers rested for an instant on his eyelids.
When they were lifted, and he opened his eyes again, Anne was gone.
He threw himself toward the brink of that precipice to follow her; but the chasm had disappeared. Where it had been, there was only a sweet meadow, mockingly beautiful in the sun.
He looked about him. All the world was beautiful as ice.
The world in which Barnard walked when Anne was gone was full of people. While Anne had been with him, there had seemed to be no one else in the land save himself and Anne. But now the paths were full of folk who moved steadily this way and that.
They did not see Barnard. At first he spoke to them, but he found they did not hear. They were absorbed, each in each. After a time he gave over accosting these people and began to hunt for his sons. But he could not find them.
And so he went forward alone, and very lonely. This was the worst part of Barnard’s dream.
He was so much alone that even The Threat had left him. He missed it. Its absence was more terrible than its presence had been. He longed for it to return, and he sought for it; and then, one day, it appeared in the air, high above him.
It was very beautiful, much to be desired. He wondered that he had never perceived its beauty in the past. It was no longer a threat; it was something kinder.
But it rode high above Barnard, seemed not to perceive him.
Barnard tried to wake and could not; and then he saw that he could only wake by coming closerto the Cloud that had been a threat. He climbed a little hill and called to it; but it rode serenely on, not regarding him.
When it had passed the hill on which he stood, it went more swiftly, and Barnard was fearful that it would vanish again. He ran after it. It was the only friendly and familiar thing in this world without Anne. He could not bear to lose it. By and by he seemed to be overtaking it; and abruptly he plunged into the cool sweetness of its embrace.
It blinded his eyes, and he began to fall; and at the end of his fall, he awoke.
For a moment after his waking, Barnard lay shuddering at the horror of his dream. The loss of Anne had been so terribly real that at first he scarce dared reach out in the darkness for her head upon the pillow beside him.
But after a moment he became conscious of the soft warmth of her body there; and he caught the sound of her slow and pleasant breathing; so he fumbled and found her hand and held it and was comforted.
The touch of his hand seemed to wake her; her fingers answered his with a loving pressure, and she said reassuringly to him:
“All right, Jimmie.”
He leaned in the darkness and found her lips and kissed her. “All right, Anne,” he replied. “Just a bad dream.”
He heard her laugh softly; and at the sound of her gentle mirth he felt strangely humble. “What is it, Anne?” he begged.
“I, too, dreamed,” she told him. “I woke before you; that is all. In the morning you will understand.”
“Understand?” he pleaded; and he was trembling with eagerness for this understanding which was already in some parts revealed to him.
“That though it seemed so long, and seemed so real, it was after all but the matter of an instant’s dream,” she told him lovingly. Her hand was on his hair as it had used to be....
So he began to understand; and he held tight to Anne’s hand for a space; and presently they slept for a little time, and woke in the glory of the risen sun, to begin together the new Day.
JUDGE HOSMER’S study was on the second floor of his home. Not a pretentious room. Calf-bound volumes on the shelves that lined the walls; a comfortable chair under a reading light, a work table on which books, papers, pen and ink were usually littered; and a more formal desk where, in laborious longhand and disdaining the services of a stenographer, the Judge wrought out his opinions. There was a homely honesty about the room; a clean suggestion of common sense and fundamental decency; a certain uprightness. Rooms much used do thus at times reflect the characteristics of those who use them.
The Judge was, this evening, at the desk and writing. He used a stiff, stub pen; and he wrote slowly, forming the large characters with care, forming the pellucid sentences with equal care. He consulted no notes; it was his custom to clarify the issues in any case so thoroughly in his own thoughts that there could be no hesitation when the moment came to set those issues down. Half a dozen sheets, already covered with his large hand, lay at his elbow. His pen was half-way down another when a light knock sounded upon his closed door.
The Judge finished the sentence upon which he was engaged, then lifted his eyes and looked across the room and called:
“Come, Mary.”
His wife opened the door and stepped inside. She shut it behind her, and crossed to her husband’s chair, and dropped her hand lightly on his head. He lifted his own hand to smooth hers caressingly.
“Almost through?” she asked.
He nodded. “Another line or two.”
“Jim Cotterill is down-stairs,” she told him.
The Judge seemed faintly surprised. “Jim?” he repeated. And added thoughtfully, half to himself, “Well, now.”
“He says there’s no hurry,” she explained. “Says he just dropped in for a word or two. Just to say howdy.”
“That’s—neighborly,” her husband commented. “Course, I’ve seen him every day, in court. But I haven’t had a chance to talk to him. To ask him how things are, down home.”
She nodded, smiling. “Another of your scruples, Bob?”
“It wouldn’t hardly have looked right,” he agreed. “The other side were doubtful, anyway, knowing I’d been attorney for the Furnace a few years ago, and knowing Jim and me were townsmen.”
“I know,” she assented.
“Case is finished, now, though,” he commented. “Tell Jim I’ll be through in fifteen or twenty minutes. You entertain him, Mary.”
She made a gesture of impatience. “He makesme uncomfortable,” she said. “I never liked him.”
The Judge smiled. “Oh, Jim’s all right. He’s fat; and he’s a little bit slick. But he means all right, I reckon. Give him a cigar and ask after his folks. He’ll do the talking for both of you.”
She nodded, moving toward the door. “Yes,” she assented; and asked: “I haven’t bothered you?”
The Judge smiled. “Lord, Honey, you never bother me.”
But when the door had closed behind her, his countenance was faintly shadowed. Concern showed in his eyes, dwelt there. He remained for a little time motionless, absorbed in some thought that distressed him. In the end, there was a suggestion of effort in his movements as he picked up his pen and began again his slow and careful writing. Bethany Iron Furnace against John Thomas, David Jones, et al. His decision.
It was half an hour later that the Judge came out of his study to the head of the stairs and shouted down them: “Hi, Jim!” Cotterill, a certain impatience increasingly manifest in his eyes, had been talking with Mrs. Hosmer. He answered, and the Judge called to him: “Come along up.”
Mrs. Hosmer followed the attorney into the hall and watched him climb the stairs. A short, bald man with a countenance that was always good-natured, but never prepossessing. She saw him grip her husband’s hand at the top, panting a littlefrom the ascent. They turned together toward the Judge’s study, and she went back into the living room.
“This is neighborly of you, Jim,” Judge Hosmer was saying, as he closed the study door behind them. “Come in and set. Have a stogie. I’m glad you didn’t hop back down home without coming to say hello.”
Cotterill’s rather small eyes whipped toward the older man, then away again. “I didn’t figure we ought to get together while the case was going on,” he explained. Both men, meticulous and precise in their professional utterances, dropped easily into the more colloquial idiom of their daily life.
“Right enough,” Judge Hosmer agreed. “Fair enough. But no harm now. How’re tricks, anyhow? Folks well?”
“Yes, well enough. Were when I left. I’ve been too busy to do much letter writing, since I came up here.”
“They have sort of kept you humping, haven’t they?” the Judge agreed.
“Well, that’s my job,” Cotterill told him; and the Judge assented.
“Sure, that’s your job.”
A little silence fell between these two. The Judge, tall and lean, with bushy brows above his wide-set eyes, studied the fat little man with some curiosity. Cotterill seemed indisposed to speak; and the other asked at last: “Family all well, Jim?”
“Well? Sure. Fine.”
“What’s the news, anyway?” the Judge insisted. “I haven’t heard from the folks lately.”
The attorney leaned back in his chair, somewhat more at ease; and he smiled. “Well,” he said. “Things go along about the same. Folks down home are right proud of you, Judge.”
“Sho,” said Hosmer, deprecatingly.
“Yes, they are,” Cotterill insisted good-naturedly. “Yes, they are. I was talking to old Tom Hughes, when he sent for me about this case, in the beginning. He told me to give you my regards and good wishes.”
“That was neighborly of him.”
Cotterill nodded. “Tom’s always been proud of you, you know, Bob. Course, being at the head of the Furnace the way he is, he runs a lot of votes in the county; and he’s always kind of figured that he elected you. Helped anyway. Feels like he’s done something to put you where you are. He liked you, when you were handling their business, too. I guess the Old Man kind of feels like you were his own son.”
Hosmer’s thin, wide mouth drew into a smile. “A fatherly interest, eh? Tom’s a good old man.”
“Well, he’s not the only one down there that feels that way about you, Bob. You know how the folks there stick together. The men that amount to anything. Tom’s bunch. Old Charley Steele, and Dave Evans, and that crowd. They’ve always been back of you. Sort of feel as though you were one of them.”
“Best friends I’ve got in the world,” Hosmer agreed.
Cotterill chuckled. “Matter of fact, it’s right funny to see them watch the papers when you’resitting in one of these big cases up here. Bragging to strangers that you’re from there.”
“Yeah,” Hosmer remarked encouragingly. He watched the fat little lawyer, an ironic question in his eyes.
“They’re all getting ready to get behind you and push, when you run again,” Cotterill assured him. “Dave Evans said here, just the other day, that you could get pretty near anything you wanted to, if you watched your step. It means a lot to have the home town folks back of you, you know. There’s a neat bunch of votes down there, Bob.”
“Sure,” the Judge agreed.
Cotterill opened his hands with a frank gesture. “Of course, they’re all watching this case, right now. It’s pretty important to the Furnace, you know. Not much in this one case, but it’s a precedent. Reckon it would cut into the business they do down there quite a bit if things went wrong. Tom says to me when we first talked about it: ‘You got to win this case, Jim. If you don’t, it’s going to cost us money.’ And what hurts the Furnace hurts the town.”
He hesitated; and the Judge said slowly and pleasantly: “You’re dodging around corners, Jim. What’s on your mind?”
Cotterill swung toward the other, leaning a little forward in his chair. “Well—” he began, then hesitated. “Bob, you know my reputation, I guess?”
“I know you’re reputed to be—successful,” said the Judge. If there was in his word anything of criticism or of reproach, Cotterill paid no heed.
“I mean, you know, that I’ve the reputation of going right after what I want. No wabbling around.”
“Have you, Jim?”
“And I’m coming right to the point now.”
“Come ahead.”
The fat little man hitched his chair a little nearer the other’s. His voice was lowered. He gesticulated with a pudgy finger.
“First thing,” he explained, “I want to be sure you understand just how important this is. To us, and to you, too. It’s business with us; but it’s a policy with you. That’s what I want you to understand. They haven’t asked you for anything because they helped you get started; and they don’t aim to. Not for what was done for you then. But we can’t afford to lose this case now.”