which bore with
it in the local dialect no suggestion of levity or vivacity, for Luke
Matchin was as dark and lowering a lout as you would readily find. But
it meant that he became more and more unpunctual, did his work worse
month by month, came home later at night, and was continually seen,
when not in the shop, with a gang of low ruffians, whose head-quarters
were in a den called the "Bird of Paradise," on the lake shore. When
his father remonstrated with him, he met everything with sullen
silence. If Saul lost his temper at this mute insolence and spoke
sharply, the boy would retort with an evil grin that made the honest
man's heart ache.

"Father," he said one day, "you'd a big sight better let me alone, if
you don't want to drive me out of this ranch. I wasn't born to make a
nigger of myself in a free country, and you can just bet your life I
ain't a-going to do it."

These things grieved Saul Matchin so that his anger would die away. At
last, one morning, after a daring burglary had been committed in
Buffland, two policemen were seen by Luke Matchin approaching the shop.
He threw open a back window, jumped out and ran rapidly down to the
steep bluff overlooking the lake. When the officers entered, Saul was
alone in the place. They asked after his boy, and he said:

"He can't be far away. What do you want of him? He hain't been doing
nothing, I hope."

"Nothing, so far as we know, but we are after two fellows who go by the
names of Maumee Jake and Dutch George. Luke runs with them sometimes,
and he could make a pile of money by helping of us get them."

"I'll tell him when he comes in," said Saul, but he never saw or heard
of his son again.

With his daughters he was scarcely more successful. For, though they
had not brought sorrow or shame to his house, they seemed as little
amenable to the discipline he had hoped to exert in his family as the
boys were. The elder had married, at fifteen years of age, a journeyman
printer; and so, instead of filling the place of housemaid in some good
family, as her father had fondly dreamed, she was cook, housemaid, and
general servant to a man aware of his rights, and determined to
maintain them, and nurse and mother (giving the more important function
precedence) to six riotous children. Though his child had thus
disappointed his hopes, she had not lost his affection, and he even
enjoyed the Sunday afternoon romp with his six grandchildren, which
ordinarily took place