vacant lands about it. The house faced north and south. On the
nearer edge of the unfenced common, which extended up to it on the
eastern side, he noted as he drew close that somebody--perhaps a boy, or
more probably a group of boys--had made a bonfire of fallen autumn
leaves and brushwood. Going away as evening came, they had left their
bonfire to burn itself out. The smouldering pile was almost under his
bedroom window. He regretted rather that the boys had gone; an urgent
longing for human companionship of some sort, however remote--a yearning
he had never before felt with such acuteness--was upon him. Tormented,
as he still was, by strange vagaries, he had almost to force himself to
unlock the front door and cross the threshold into the gloomy interior
of his cottage. But before entering, and while he yet wrestled with a
vague desire to retrace his steps and go back down the street, he
stooped and picked up his copy of the afternoon paper which the carrier,
with true carrierlike accuracy, had flung upon the narrow front porch.

Inside the house, the floor gave off sharp little sounds, the warped
floor squeaking and wheezing under the weight of his tread.
Subconsciously, this irritated him; a lot of causes were combining to
harass him, it seemed; there was a general conspiracy on the part of
objects animate and inanimate to make him--well, suspicious. And Uncle
Tobe was not given to nervousness, which made it worse. He was ashamed
of himself that he should be in such state. Glancing about him in a
furtive, almost in an apprehensive way, he crossed the front room to the
middle room, which was his bed chamber, the kitchen being the room at
the rear. In the middle room he lit a coal-oil lamp which stood upon a
small centre table. Alongside the table he opened out the paper and
glanced at a caption running half-way across the top of the front page;
then, fretfully he crumpled up the printed sheet in his hand and let it
fall upon the floor. He had no desire to read the account of his one
failure. Why should the editor dwell at such length and with so prodigal
a display of black head-line type upon this one bungled job when every
other job of all the jobs that had gone before, had been successful in
every detail? Let's see, now, how many men had he hanged with precision
and with speed and with never an accident to mar the proceedings? A
long, martialed array of names came trooping into his brain, and along
with the names t