ith his son victory naturally perched upon his banners, so
that the boy's spirit (which rebelled alway against the iron rule of the
household), if not broken down, was certainly so far kept under that it
rarely showed itself. It was a slumbering volcano, ready, when it
reached its strength, to pour out burning lava of passion and
evil-doing.

Thus the boy grew up almost to manhood, with very few rays of sunshine
cast over his early path to look back upon when he should Teach the
middle eminence of life. And the gloom of the present cheerless and
austere way caused him to look forward with the more rapture to that
time, when, with his twenty-first birth-day, should come the power to do
as he pleased with himself: with his hours of labor and of ease, with
his Sabbath-days and his work-days.

A little before the time when big majority was to come and set him
partially free--for then, according to the good old Puritan custom, he
would have his 'freedom-suit,' and probably a few hundred dollars and a
horse, and might remain with his father or go elsewhere--there fell
across Jason's path a sweet gleam of golden sunshine, such as he had
never known before, nor ever dreamed of. When he was in his twenty-first
year, his father, the Deacon,--being urged thereto by the failing health
of his overtasked wife,--adopted as half daughter, half serving maid, a
beautiful and friendless girl, who might otherwise have gone to ruin.
Her name was plain Hannah Lee. No name can be imagined too liquid, sweet
and voluptuous in its sound to typify her loveliness. It was not
strange, therefore, that she had not been long in the house before Jason
Fletcher, hitherto deprived of much cheerful female society, felt
stealing over him a new and strange excitement of mingled joy and
wonder. It is trite and tame to say that for him there came new flowers
in all the fields and by all the road-sides, and a hitherto unknown
fragrance in the balmy air; rosier colors to the sunset, softer tints to
the yellow gray east at dawn, brighter sparkle to the brooks, breezier
glories to the mountain-tops; but, doubtless, this was strictly true, as
it has been many times before and since to many other men, but scarce
ever accompanied by so great and complete a change.

His father might have expected it, and his mother have reckoned upon it,
but no thought of love in connection with their quiet and awkward son
ever entered into their minds, and so they put this sweet c