of mind in days gone by; if he could have known that the time
would come when he, Joseph Stebbins, would feel culpable at approaching
any front door! He touched the electric bell and stood close to the
door, so that he might not be discovered from the windows. Presently the
door opened the length of a chain, and a fair girlish head appeared.
She was one of the girls who had been terrified by him in the woods, but
that he did not know. Now again her eyes dilated and her pretty mouth
rounded! She gave a little cry and slammed the door in his face, and he
heard excited voices. Then he saw two pale, pretty faces, the faces of
the two girls who had come upon him in the wood, peering at him around
a corner of the lace in the bay-window, and he understood what it
meant--that he was an object of terror to them. Directly he experienced
such a sense of mortal insult as he had never known, not even when the
law had taken hold of him. He held his head high and went away, his very
soul boiling with a sort of shamed rage. "Those two girls are afraid of
me," he kept saying to himself. His knees shook with the horror of it.
This terror of him seemed the hardest thing to bear in a hard life.
He returned to his green nook beside the brook and sat down again. He
thought for the moment no more of woodpiles, of his life. He thought
about those two young girls who had been afraid of him. He had never
had an impulse to harm any living thing. A curious hatred toward these
living things who had accused him of such an impulse came over him. He
laughed sardonically. He wished that they would again come and peer
at him through the bushes; he would make a threatening motion for the
pleasure of seeing the silly things scuttle away.

After a while he put it all out of mind, and again returned to his
problem. He lay beside the brook and pondered, and finally fell asleep
in the hot air, which increased in venom, until the rattle of
thunder awoke him. It was very dark--a strange, livid darkness.
"A thunder-storm," he muttered, and then he thought of his new
clothes--what a misfortune it would be to have them soaked. He arose and
pushed through the thicket around him into a cart path, and it was then
that he saw the thing which proved to be the stepping-stone toward his
humble fortunes. It was only a small silk umbrella with a handle tipped
with pearl. He seized upon it with joy, for it meant the salvation of
his precious clothes. He opened it and held i