THE DEEPEST SHADOW

XXXII. I COME TO THE SURFACE

XXXIII. THE GROWING DISTANCE

XXXIV. THE BLOW THAT CLEARS

XXXV. THE ULTIMATE CHOICE

THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I APPEAR WITH FEW PRETENSIONS

As the storm broke and a shower of hail rattled like a handful of
pebbles against our little window, I choked back a sob and edged my
small green-painted stool a trifle nearer the hearth. On the opposite
side of the wire fender, my father kicked off his wet boots, stretched
his feet, in grey yarn stockings, out on the rag carpet in front of the
fire, and reached for his pipe which he had laid, still smoking, on the
floor under his chair.

"It's as true as the Bible, Benjy," he said, "that on the day you were
born yo' brother President traded off my huntin' breeches for a yaller
pup."

My knuckles went to my eyes, while the smart of my mother's slap faded
from the cheek I had turned to the fire.

"What's become o' th' p-p-up-p?" I demanded, as I stared up at him with
my mouth held half open in readiness to break out again.

"Dead," responded my father solemnly, and I wept aloud.

It was an October evening in my childhood, and so vivid has my later
memory of it become that I can still see the sheets of water that rolled
from the lead pipe on our roof, and can still hear the splash! splash!
with which they fell into the gutter below. For three days the clouds
had hung in a grey curtain over the city, and at dawn a high wind,
blowing up from the river, had driven the dead leaves from the
churchyard like flocks of startled swallows into our little street.
Since morning I had watched them across my mother's "prize" red geranium
upon our window-sill--now whipped into deep swirls and eddies over the
sunken brick pavement, now rising in sighing swarms against the closed
doors of the houses, now soaring aloft until they flew almost as high as
the living swallows in the belfry of old Saint John's. Then as the dusk
fell, and the street lamps glimmered like blurred stars through the
rain, I drew back into our little sitting-room, which glowed bright as
an ember against the fierce weather outside.

Half an hour earlier my father had come up from the marble yard, where
he spent his days cutting lambs and doves and elaborate ivy wreaths in
stone, and the smell from his great rubber coat, which hung drying
before the kitchen stove, floated with the aroma of coffee through the
half