y. The next day he went into Jerry Pollard's store and began
his winter's work. He measured off unbleached cotton cloth for a servant
girl; sold a pair of shoes to a farmer, a cravat to a young fellow from
the grocery shop next door, and a set of garden tools to an elderly lady
who lived in the street facing the asylum and had a greenhouse. At odd
times he looked over Jerry Pollard's books, and after dark he dunned
several debtors for unpaid bills. He did it quietly and thoroughly,
neither shirking nor overelaborating the minutest detail. There are men
who have an immense capacity for taking pains that is rarer than genius,
and he was one of them. Whether he made a success or a failure of life,
he would do it with a conscientious use of opportunities, good or bad.
An eye that is trained to detect the values of circumstances, and a hand
that is quick to adjust them, have produced the mental forces that make
or unmake the race.

When the day was over he went home and ascended to his room in silence.
The work had left him with a curious irritating sense of its
distastefulness. The second day was as the first--the week was as the
month. There were no variations, no difficulties, no advancement. With
the round of monotony his irritation sharpened. When Jerry Pollard spoke
he responded in monosyllables; when Jerry Pollard's pretty daughter,
Bessie, smiled in from the doorway, he kept his eyes on the counter. At
home he was even less responsive. The impulse which had prompted him to
return a cheering falsehood to his stepmother passed quickly. He
sacrificed himself to the family interests, but he sacrificed himself
begrudgingly. His face assumed lines of sullen repression; the tones of
his voice were full of subdued resentment. He found satisfaction in
meeting their overtures with irony, their constraint with callousness.
Since he had given the one thing they required and he valued, he
justified himself in a series of petty tyrannies. He met his stepmother
with avoidance, his father with aversion. The children he swore at or
ignored. Amos Burr, gathering his slow wits together, regarded him with
a chuckle of self-congratulation. His sensibilities were not susceptible
to slight friction, and his son's attitude seemed to him of small
significance. He had got what he wanted, and that was sufficient unto
the hour.

After the first two months, Nicholas underwent a dogged and indifferent
adaptation. He ceased to think of the judge,