stopped altogether. "That's his game, is it?" he said, in a rising tone
of scathing contempt. An ungovernable movement of his arm sent the plate
flying out of her fingers. He shot out a violent curse.

She shrank from him, putting her hand against the wall.

"No!" he raged. "He expects! Expects _me_--for his rotten money! . . . .
Who wants his home? Mad--not he! Don't you think. He wants his own way.
He wanted to turn me into a miserable lawyer's clerk, and now he wants
to make of me a blamed tame rabbit in a cage. Of me! Of me!" His subdued
angry laugh frightened her now.

"The whole world ain't a bit too big for me to spread my elbows in, I
can tell you--what's your name--Bessie--let alone a dam' parlour in a
hutch. Marry! He wants me to marry and settle! And as likely as not he
has looked out the girl too--dash my soul! And do you know the Judy, may
I ask?"

She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and
fretting too much to notice her distress. He bit his thumb with rage at
the mere idea. A window rattled up.

"A grinning, information fellow," pronounced old Hagberd dogmatically,
in measured tones. And the sound of his voice seemed to Bessie to make
the night itself mad--to pour insanity and disaster on the earth. "Now
I know what's wrong with the people here, my dear. Why, of course!
With this mad chap going about. Don't you have anything to do with him,
Bessie. Bessie, I say!"

They stood as if dumb. The old man fidgeted and mumbled to himself at