bs, the company concluded with
pretty bad grace to make the most of what had been prepared in the way
of vegetables and side dishes, long ago cold. Mr. Griffin was mad,
insulted, and hungry, and the contents of the letter he had received
seemed to add very little warmth to the food, but a great deal to his
anger, for he tore it up into very small pieces, as if it were David
himself he was torturing, and, with a look the company did not consider
very sociable, scattered it on the floor.

V.

The sky, as if presaging David Dubbs's misfortune, had grown overcast,
and flung down spiteful little sallies of snow as he crossed the river
on his way to Mr. Griffin's. The creaking of the bridge's huge timbers
and the splitting ice below it made him shiver and pull his threadbare
coat close about him and sacrifice his old hands to the wind to save his
freezing ears. The same scarf bound them as the night before, but an icy
gale like that which swept from the open river would have frozen through
arctic furs. Notwithstanding all this, his spirits were lighter than
usual. The scene he had left at home floated on before his eyes, and
transfused itself with the black, sketchy trees against the sky and
blent with the ragged barbs of smoke that depended from cottage
chimneys. The wind had been boisterous enough, and would have torn it
away on a cantering jaunt not many minutes ago, but, surcharged as it
was now with blinding snow, it had its own liberty to look after, and
paid little heed to anything else.

The snow came on thicker and thicker, and had begun to whiten the
streets by the time David reached Mr. Griffin's house, and now, as he
stood shocked and bewildered in the garden again, it lay deep and
dreadfully silent as far as the eye could reach. Had he heard truly? Had
he, for the first time in a long, and honest, and reputable life, been
called a thief? And by the man whom his heart had overflowed in
gratitude to but a moment before! David Dubbs a thief! And what of? What
had he stolen? Oh, it was cruel to his poor old heart! "And the girls so
merry, even now," he thought. How; how could he go to them with these
bitter tidings? To be deprived of even the poor means his pen had
faithfully and honestly earned for them; to toil so long, so wearily for
the meed of a thief, for the name of a thief! and he wept in his utter
woe.

His hat was still on his head, his coat was undone, his scarf had fallen
back on his shoulders; his