e hill the wind brought me a bit of
his rollicking tune as I huddled on the school-house steps, waiting.
The world was going well with him. He had all that the wise count
good; he was winning what the foolish count better. With head high and
swinging arms he came on, the beat of his feet on the hard road keeping
time to his gay whistling. Tim was winning in the game. While his
brother was droning over the reader and the spelling-book with
two-score leather-headed children, he was fighting his way upward in
the world of commerce. While his brother was wringing a living from a
few acres of niggardly soil and a little school, he was on the road to
riches; while his brother was wrangling with the worthies of the store
over the momentous problems of the day, he was where those problems
were being worked out and standing by the men who were solving them.
All in this world worth having was Tim's, and now even what was his
brother's he had taken. To him that hath! From him that hath not! He
had all. I had nothing. Now as he came swinging on so carelessly, I
knew that I had lost even him.

Never once had there come to my mind the thought of doing my brother
any bodily harm. My emotions were too conflicting for me to know just
why I had come at all into the night to meet him. Now it was against
him that the violence of my anger would vent itself. Now it was
against myself, and I cursed myself for an idle, dreaming fool. Then
came over me, overwhelming me, a sense of my own utter loneliness, and
against it Tim stood out so bold and clear-cut and strong; that I felt
myself crying out to him not to desert me and let a woman take him from
me. I thought of the old days when he and I had been all in all to
each other, and I hated the woman who had come between us, who had
lured me from him, who had lured him from me. Then as against my
misery, she stood out so bold and good, so wholly fair, that I cursed
Tim for taking her from me. I wanted to see him in the full heat of my
anger to tell him to his face how he had served me; to stand before him
an accuser till he slunk from me and left me alone, as I would be alone
from now to the end.

So I had quickened my pace, hobbling up the starlit road to the
school-house. There I was driven by sheer exhaustion to the shelter of
the doorway, and in the narrow refuge I huddled, waiting and listening.
The keen wind found me out and seemed to take joy in rushing in on me
in biti