ite him hard to know that it was all in vain. And then his
vicarious ambitions, his pride, his pleasure, in the elevation of
"Fambly"! Walter cast about futilely for an assurance that he might
have the satisfaction of reducing all this. He knew that Justus, in
his mistaken certainty of the result of the election, would not ask
for information, and that he could not read the newspapers. A
letter--even if there were any remote presumption as to his
address--would lie indefinitely in the mail, and find its way at last
to the Dead Letter Office.

Walter realized after a time that Justus intended to return no
more--the woman he loved was his brother's wife. Justus had probably
put the breadth of the State between them, Walter sneeringly
concluded.

He made haste to quarrel with his wife's mother, in his perverse
relish of aught that might give Theodosia pain, and they quitted her
home and took up their residence in the house in which Theodosia had
once expected to live, the scene of the early struggles of "Fambly."

Theodosia's beauty could hardly be said to fade; it disappeared in the
overblowing. She grew very fat and unwieldy as the years wore on; her
face broadened, her florid complexion degenerated into a mottled red
and purple. She was no prettier than her mother had been when she
ridiculed her lover's eulogy of her mother's spiritual beauty. She had
a hard life with her drunken, idle, slothful husband, who habitually
imputed to her agency every evil that had ever befallen him, holding
it to excuse him from all exertion to better their very poor estate,
and whose affection had been easily kindled by her beauty and as
easily extinguished.

* * * * *

Justus, self-exiled from the mountains, tramped the valley roads,
hardly caring whither, and drifted finally to the outskirts of one of
the large manufacturing towns of Tennessee. He worked for some seasons
doggedly, drudgingly, on a farm near by, but found a sort of
entertainment in the sights and sounds within the city limits, as
having no association with the past which his memory dreaded. He
prospered in some sort, for although he was ignorant of all methods of
skilled labor, fidelity is an art with so few proficients that friends
and opportunities were not lacking. His progress was somewhat
hampered, however, despite his evident intelligence, by a doubt which
prevailed concerning his mental balance. He was often observed to
stand a