LITMIR.BIZ

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conflict with his uncle and aunt. On one pretext or another he contrived to escape from the restraints of the house, and to spend his evenings in such society as a village offers. A young man may avoid the temptations of a great city, where there are many circles of association to choose from; but in a village where there is but one group, and where all the youth are nearly on a level, demoralization is easier. Tom had a country boy's appetite for companionship and excitement; he had no end of buoyant spirits and cordial friendliness; and he was a good teller of amusing stories, – so that he easily came to be a leader in all the frolics and freaks of the town. His uncle administered some severe rebukes and threatened graver consequences; but rebukes and threats served only to add the spice of peril to Tom's adventures.

      The austerity of acquisitiveness is more tedious to others, perhaps, than the austerity of religious conviction. To a child like Janet, endowed with passion and imagination, the grave monotony of the Grayson household was almost unbearable. From the moment of Tom's coming she had clung to him, rejoicing in his boyish spirits, and listening eagerly to his fund of stories, which were partly made up for her amusement, and partly drawn from romances which he had somewhat surreptitiously read. When he was away, Janet watched for his return; she romped with him in defiance of the stiff proprieties of the house, and she followed him at his chores. She cherished a high admiration for his daring and rebellious spirit, often regretting that she was not a boy: it would be fine to climb out of a bedroom window at night to get away to some forbidden diversion! On the other hand, the unselfish devotion of Tom to the child was in strange contrast with the headlong willfulness of his character. He made toys and planned surprises for her, and he was always ready to give up his time to her pleasure.

      It is hardly likely that Grayson would have borne with his nephew a single year if it had not been for Janet's attachment to him. More than once, when his patience was clean tired out, he said to his wife something to this effect:

      "I think, Charlotte, I'll have to send Tom back to his mother. He gets nothing but mischief here in town, and he worries me to death."

      To which Mrs. Grayson would reply: "Just think of Janet. I'm afraid she'd pine away if Tom was sent off. The boy is kind to her, and I'm sure that's one good thing about him."

      This consideration had always settled the question; for the two main purposes of life with Grayson and his wife were to accumulate property and to gratify every wish of their child. Having only one sentiment, it had acquired a tremendous force.

      VII

      LOCKWOOD'S REVENGE

      When Tom, after his violent speech on that unlucky Monday morning, had gone out of Wooden & Snyder's store, George Lockwood turned to Snyder, the junior partner, and said, with his face a little flushed:

      "What a fool that boy is, anyhow! He came in here the other night after the store was shut up and played cards with Dave Sovine till he lost all the money he had. I tried my best to stop him, but I couldn't do it. He went on and bet all the clo'es he could spare and lost 'em. I had to lend him the money to get 'em back. It seems Tom's girl – John Albaugh's daughter – heard of it, and now he will have it that I went in partnership with Sovine to get his money, and that I wanted to get Rachel Albaugh away from 'im."

      "You oughtn't to have any card-playing here," said Snyder.

      "I told the boys then that if they come in here again they mustn't bring any cards."

      "Tom's a fool to threaten you that way. You could bind him over on that, I suppose," said Snyder.

      "I s'pose I could," said George.

      But he did nothing that day. He prided himself on being a man that a body couldn't run over, but he had his own way of resisting aggression; he was not Esau, but Jacob. He could not storm and threaten like Tom; there was no tempest in him. Cold venom will keep, and Lockwood's resentments did not lose their strength by exposure to the air. The day after Tom's outburst, Lockwood, having taken time to consider the alternatives, suggested to Snyder, that while he wasn't afraid of Tom, there was no knowing what such a hot-head might do. Lockwood professed an unwillingness to bind Tom over to keep the peace, but thought some influence might be brought to bear on him that would serve the purpose. Snyder proposed that Lockwood should go to see Tom's uncle, but George objected. That would only inflame Tom and make matters worse. Perhaps Snyder would see Blackman, so that Lockwood need not appear in the matter? Then Blackman could speak to Grayson the elder, if he thought best.

      The calculating temper, and the touch of craftiness, pliancy, and tact in Lockwood served the ends of his employers in many ways, and Snyder was quite willing to put his clerk under obligations of friendship to him. Therefore, when he saw Tom go out of the office, Snyder mounted the stairs and had an interview with Blackman. As the lawyer was intrusted with all the bad debts and pettifogging business of Wooden & Snyder, any suggestion from a member of the firm was certain to receive attention. Snyder told the lawyer that Lockwood didn't want to drag Tom before a squire, and suggested that Blackman could settle it by getting the uncle to give the fellow a good admonition. He offered the suggestion as though it were quite on his own motion, he having overheard Tom's threat. The hand of George Lockwood was concealed; but it was only Lockwood who knew how exceedingly vulnerable Tom's fortunes were on the side of his relations with his uncle. That evening Blackman sat in Grayson's sitting-room. He was a man with grayish hair, of middle height, and rather too lean to fill up his clothes, which hung on his frame rather than fitted it; and if one regarded his face, there seemed too little substance to quite fill out his skin, which was not precisely wrinkled, but rather wilted. Grayson had turned around in his writing-chair and sat with one leg over the arm, but Blackman had probably never lolled in his life: he was possessed by a sort of impotent uneasiness that simulated energy and diligence. He sat, as was his wont, on the front rail of the chair-seat, as though afraid to be comfortable, and he held in his hand a high hat half full of papers, according to the custom of the lawyers of that day, who carried on their heads that part of their business which they could not carry in them. Blackman told the story of Tom's gambling as he had heard it, and of his threatening Lockwood, while the brows of Tom's uncle visibly darkened. Then the lawyer came to what he knew would seem to Grayson the vital point in the matter.

      "You know," he said, "if George Lockwood was a-mind to, he could bind Tom to keep the peace; though I don't s'pose Tom meant anything more than brag by talking that way. But it wouldn't be pleasant for you to have Tom hauled up, and to have to go his bail. I told Snyder I thought you could fix it up without going before the squire." Blackman passed his heavily laden hat from his right hand to his left, and then with the right he nervously roached up his stiff, rusty hair, which he habitually kept standing on end. After which he took a red silk handkerchief from his hat and wiped his face, while Grayson got up and walked the floor.

      "I shouldn't like to have to go anybody's bail," said the latter after awhile; "it's against my principles to go security. I suppose the best thing would be to send him back to the country to cool off."

      Blackman nodded a kind of half assent, but did not venture any further expression of opinion. He rose and deposited his silk handkerchief in a kind of coil on the papers in his hat, and then bent his head forward and downward so as to put on the hat without losing its contents; once it was in place he brought his head to a perpendicular position, so that all the mass of portable law business settled down on the handkerchief, which acted as a cushion between Blackman's affairs and his head.

      Tom came in as Blackman went out, and something in the manner of the latter gave him a feeling that he had been the subject of conversation between the lawyer and his uncle. He went directly to his room, and debated within himself whether or not he should go down and interrupt by a frank and full confession the discussion which he thought was probably taking place between Mr. and Mrs. Grayson. But knowing his uncle's power of passive resistance, he debated long – so long that it came to be too late, and he went to bed, resolved to have the first of it with his uncle in the morning.

      There was a very serious conference between the two members of the Grayson firm that evening. Mrs. Grayson again presented to her husband the consideration that, if Tom should go away, she didn't see what she was to do with Janet. The child would cry her eyes out, and there'd be no managing her. Grayson sat for some time helpless before this argument.

      "I

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