obedience. Thus affairs went on in our quiet household for what seemed
to me a very long time.




CHAPTER IV.


THE PENDULUM.

It may have been a year after this, it may have been two, I cannot
tell, when the next great event in my life occurred. I think it was
towards the close of an Autumn, but there was not so much about our
house as elsewhere to mark the changes of the seasons, for the grass
was always green. I remember it was a sultry afternoon. I had been out
almost the whole day, wandering hither and thither over the grass, and
I felt hot and oppressed. Not an air was stirring. I longed for a
breath of wind, for I was not afraid of the wind itself, only of the
trees that made it. Indeed, I delighted in the wind, and would run
against it with exuberant pleasure, even rejoicing in the fancy that I,
as well as the trees, could make the wind by shaking my hair about as I
ran. I must run, however; whereas the trees, whose prime business it
was, could do it without stirring from the spot. But this was much too
hot an afternoon for me, whose mood was always more inclined to the
passive than the active, to run about and toss my hair, even for the
sake of the breeze that would result therefrom. I bethought myself. I
was nearly a man now; I would be afraid of things no more; I would get
out my pendulum, and see whether that would not help me. Not this time
would I flinch from what consequences might follow. Let them be what