e with you, did there,
Hedrick?" she asked, and, receiving an incoherent but furious
reply, she was again overcome, so that she must lean against the
fence to recover. "It seems--so--so _curious_," she explained,
gasping, "that the first one--the--the only one--should be
an--a--an----" She was unable to continue.

Hedrick's distrust became painfully increased: he began to feel
that he disliked Laura.

She was still wiping her eyes and subject to recurrent outbursts
when they reached their own abode; and as he bitterly flung
himself into a chair upon the vacant front porch, he heard her
stifling an attack as she mounted the stairs to her own room. He
swung the chair about, with its back to the street, and sat facing
the wall. He saw nothing. There are profundities in the abyss
which reveal no glimpse of the sky.

Presently he heard his father coughing near by; and the sound was
hateful, because it seemed secure and unshamed. It was a cough of
moral superiority; and just then the son would have liked to
believe that his parent's boyhood had been one of degradation as
complete as his own; but no one with this comfortable cough could
ever have plumbed such depths: his imagination refused the picture
he was bitterly certain that Mr. Madison had never kissed an
idiot.

Hedrick had a dread that his father might speak to him; he was in
no condition for light conversation. But Mr. Madison was unaware
of his son's near presence, and continued upon his purposeless
way. He was smoking his one nightly cigar and enjoying the
moonlight. He drifted out toward the sidewalk and was accosted by
a passing acquaintance, a comfortable burgess of sixty, leading a
child of six or seven, by the hand.

"Out taking the air, are you, Mr. Madison?" said the pedestrian,
pausing.

"Yes; just trying to cool off," returned the other. "How are you,
Pryor, anyway? I haven't seen you for a long time."

"Not since last summer," said Pryor. "I only get here once or
twice a year, to see my married daughter. I always try to spend
August with her if I can. She's still living in that little house,
over on the next street, I bought for her through your real-estate
company. I suppose you're still in the same business?"

"Yes. Pretty slack, these days."

"I suppose so, I suppose so," responded Mr. Pryor, nodding.
"Summer, I suppose it usually is. Well, I don't know when I'll be
going out on the road again myself. Business is pretty slack all
over th