d roofs below? He thought
of such a possible catastrophe with a singular indifference, in fact with
a feeling almost like pleasure. It would be such a swift and thorough
solution of this great problem of life he was working out in
ever-recurring daily anguish! The remote possibility of such a
catastrophe had frightened some timid dwellers beneath The Mountain to
other places of residence; here the danger was most imminent, and yet he
loved to dwell upon the chances of its occurrence. Danger is often the
best counterirritant in cases of mental suffering; he found a solace in
careless exposure of his life, and learned to endure the trials of each
day better by dwelling in imagination on the possibility that it might be
the last for him and the home that was his.

Time, the great consoler, helped these influences, and he gradually fell
into more easy and less dangerous habits of life. He ceased from his
more perilous rambles. He thought less of the danger from the great
overhanging rocks and forests; they had hung there for centuries; it was
not very likely they would crash or slide in his time. He became
accustomed to all Elsie's strange looks and ways. Old Sophy dressed her
with ruffles round her neck, and hunted up the red coral branch with
silver bells which the little toothless Dudleys had bitten upon for a
hundred years. By an infinite effort, her father forced himself to
become the companion of this child, for whom he had such a mingled
feeling, but whose presence was always a trial to him, and often a
terror.

At a cost which no human being could estimate, he had done his duty, and
in some degree reaped his reward. Elsie grew up with a kind of filial
feeling for him, such as her nature was capable of. She never would obey
him; that was not to be looked for. Commands, threats, punishments, were
out of the question with her; the mere physical effects of crossing her
will betrayed themselves in such changes of expression and manner that it
would have been senseless to attempt to govern her in any such way.
Leaving her mainly to herself, she could be to some extent indirectly
influenced,--not otherwise. She called her father "Dudley," as if he had
been her brother. She ordered everybody and would be ordered by none.

Who could know all these things, except the few people of the household?
What wonder, therefore, that ignorant and shallow persons laid the blame
on her father of those peculiarities which w