pplanted her in her husband's affections, and her husband as
robbing her of the love of her daughter. In truth, Mrs. Samuel Anderson
had come to stand so perpetually on guard against imaginary
encroachments on her rights, that she saw enemies everywhere. She hated
Wehle because he was a Dutchman; she would have hated him on a dozen
other scores if he had been an American. It was offense enough that
Julia loved him.

So now she resolved to gain her husband to her side by her version of
the story, and before dinner she had told him how August had charged her
with being false and cruel to Andrew many years ago, and how Jule had
thrown it up to her, and how near she had come to dropping down with
palpitation of the heart. And Samuel Anderson reddened, and declared
that he would protect his wife from such insults. The notion that he
protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's, which
received a generous encouragement at the hands of his wife. It was a
favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical way, at his
feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness implore his protection.
And Samuel felt all the courage of knighthood in defending his
inoffensive wife. Under cover of this fiction, so flattering to the
vanity of an overawed husband, she had managed at one time or another to
embroil him with almost all the neighbors, and his refusal to join
fences had resulted in that crooked arrangement known as a "devil's
lane" on three sides of his farm.

Julia dared not stay away from dinner, which was miserable enough. She
did not venture so much as to look at August, who sat opposite her, and
who was the most unhappy person at the table, because he did not know
what all the unhappiness was about. Mr. Anderson's brow foreboded a
storm, Mrs. Anderson's face was full of an earthquake, Cynthy Ann was
sitting in shadow, and Julia's countenance perplexed him. Whether she
was angry with him or not, he could not be sure. Of one thing he was
certain: she was suffering a great deal, and that was enough to make him
exceedingly unhappy.

Sitting through his hurried meal in this atmosphere surcharged with
domestic electricity, he got the notion--he could hardly tell how--that
all this lowering of the sky had something to do with him. What had he
done? Nothing. His closest self-examination told him that he had done no
wrong. But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience
condemned him for some unknown