e
long courses of nature--was one of those minor material antagonisms
of life which keep the spirit whetted for harder ones.

Paulina Maria Judd had many such; when the pricks of fate were too
firm set against her struggling feet she saved herself from the
despair of utter futility by taking soap and water and sand, and
going forth to attack the paint on her house walls, and also the
front door-stone worn in frequent hollows for the collection of dirt
and dust.

This evening, when Jerome drew near, he saw a long rise of back over
the door-step, and a swiftly plying shoulder and arm. Paulina Maria
looked up without ceasing when Jerome stood beside her.

"You're working late," he said, with an attempt at pleasantry.

"I have to do my cleanin' late or not at all," replied Paulina Maria,
in her cold, calm voice. She rubbed more soap on her cloth.

"Uncle Adoniram at home?" Jerome had always called Adoniram "Uncle,"
though he was his father's cousin.

"Yes."

"I want to see him a minute about something."

"You'll have to go round to the back door. I can't have more dirt
tracked into this while it's wet."

Jerome went around the house to the back door. As he passed the
lighted sitting-room windows he saw a monstrous shadow with steadily
moving hands on the curtain. He fumbled his way through the lighted
room, in which sat Adoniram Judd closing shoes and his son Henry
knitting. When the door opened Henry, whose shadow Jerome had seen on
the window-pane, looked up with the vacant peering of the blind, but
his fingers never ceased twirling the knitting-needles.

"How are you?" said Jerome.

Adoniram returned his salutation without rising, and bade him take a
chair. Henry spoke not at all, and bent his dim eyes again over his
knitting without a smile. Henry Judd had the lank height of his
father, and his blunt elongation of face and features, informed by
his mother's spirit. The result in his expression was an absolute
ferocity instead of severity of gloom, a fury of resentment against
his fate, instead of that bitter leaning towards it which is the acme
of defiance.

Henry Judd bent his heavy, pale brows over the miserable feminine
work to which he was forced. His long hands were white as a girl's,
and revealed their articulation as they moved; his face,
transparently pale, showed a soft furze of young beard on cheek and
chin.

"How are you, Henry?" asked Jerome.

Henry made no reply, only scowled more gloom