dington, because it's a
fool wrapped up in its own conceit and stroking the lion's cub till it's
grown big enough to eat us."

He got up and Lydia called to him:

"What is the lion's cub?"

"Why, it's the people. And Weedon Moore is showing it how hungry it is
by chucking the raw meat at it and the saucers of blood. And pretty soon
it'll eat us and eat Weedie too."

He went in and up the stairs and Lydia fancied she heard the tearing of
papers in his room.

XXIV

The dry branch has come alive. The young Jeff Lydia had known through
Farvie was here, miraculously full of hope and laughter. Jeff was as
different after that day as a man could be if he had been buried and
revived and cast his grave-clothes off. He measured everything by his
new idea and the answers came out pat. The creative impulse shot up in
him and grew. He knew what it was to be a prisoner under penalty, every
cruel phase of it; and now that he saw everybody else in bonds, one to
an unbalanced law of life we call our destiny, one to cant, one to
greed, one to untended impulse, he was afire to let the prisoners out.
If they knew they were bound they could throw off these besetments of
mortality and walk in beauty. Old Addington, the beloved, must free
herself. Too long had she been held by the traditions she had erected
into forms of worship. The traditions lasted still, though now nobody
truly believed in them. She was beating her shawms and cymbals in the
old way, but to a new tune, and the tune was not the song of liberty, he
believed, but a child's lullaby. In that older time she had decently
covered discomfiting facts, asserted that she believed revealed
religion, and blessed God, in an ingenuous candour, for setting her feet
in paths where she could walk decorously. But now that she was really
considering new gods he wanted her to take herself in hand and find out
what she really worshipped. What was God and what was Baal? Had she the
nerve to burn her sacrifices and see? He began to understand her better
every day he lived with her. Poor old Addington! she had been suddenly
assaulted by the clamour of the times; it told her shameful things were
happening, and she had, with her old duteous responsiveness, snatched at
remedies. The rich, she found, had robbed the poor. Therefore let there
be no more poverty, though not on that account less riches. And here the
demagogue arose and bade her shirk no issue, even the red flag. God
Himself