oceedings"
to take, the brilliant idea occurred to me of appealing to Lord
Redcar as the ground landlord, and, as it were, our feudal chief,
and pointing out to him that his security for his rent was depreciating
in old Pettigrew's hands. I added some general observations on
leaseholds, the taxation of ground rents, and the private ownership
of the soil. And Lord Redcar, whose spirit revolted at democracy,
and who cultivated a pert humiliating manner with his inferiors to
show as much, earned my distinguished hatred for ever by causing
his secretary to present his compliments to me, and his request
that I would mind my own business and leave him to manage his. At
which I was so greatly enraged that I first tore this note into
minute innumerable pieces, and then dashed it dramatically all over
the floor of my room--from which, to keep my mother from the job,
I afterward had to pick it up laboriously on all-fours.

I was still meditating a tremendous retort, an indictment of all
Lord Redcar's class, their manners, morals, economic and political
crimes, when my trouble with Nettie arose to swamp all minor
troubles. Yet, not so completely but that I snarled aloud when his
lordship's motor-car whizzed by me, as I went about upon my long
meandering quest for a weapon. And I discovered after a time that
my mother had bruised her knee and was lame. Fearing to irritate
me by bringing the thing before me again, she had set herself to
move her bed out of the way of the drip without my help, and she
had knocked her knee. All her poor furnishings, I discovered, were
cowering now close to the peeling bedroom walls; there had come a
vast discoloration of the ceiling, and a washing-tub was
in occupation of the middle of her chamber. . . .

It is necessary that I should set these things before you, should
give the key of inconvenience and uneasiness in which all things
were arranged, should suggest the breath of trouble that stirred
along the hot summer streets, the anxiety about the strike, the
rumors and indignations, the gatherings and meetings, the increasing
gravity of the policemen's faces, the combative headlines of the
local papers, the knots of picketers who scrutinized any one who
passed near the silent, smokeless forges, but in my mind, you must
understand, such impressions came and went irregularly; they made
a moving background, changing undertones, to my preoccupation by
that darkly shaping purpose to which a revolver w