the closing, in his
uncle's shop at night. Every evening he would load himself with the
sheaf of bound shoes and hasten down the road. He liked to work in
company with a man, rather than with his mother and Elmira; it gave
him a sense of independence and maturity. He did not mind so much
delving away on those hard leather seams while his mates were out
coasting and skating, for he had the sensation of responsibility--of
being the head of a family. Here he felt like a man supporting his
mother and sister; at home he was only a boy, held to his task under
the thumb of a woman.

Then, too, his uncle Ozias's conversation was a kind of pungent
stimulant--not pleasant to the taste, not even recognizable in all
its savors, yet with a growing power of fascination.

Ozias Lamb's shoemaker's shop was simply a little one-room building
in the centre of the field south of his cottage house. He had in it a
tiny box-stove, red-hot from fall to spring. When Jerome, coming on a
cold night, opened the door, a hot breath scented with dried leather
rushed in his face. Within sat his uncle on his shoemaker's bench,
short and squat like an Eastern idol on his throne. His body was
settled into itself with long habit of labor, his mind with
contemplation. His high, bald forehead overshadowed his lower face
like a promontory of thought; his eyes, even when he was alone, were
full of a wise, condemning observation; his mouth was inclined always
in a set smile at the bitter humor of things. The face of this
elderly New England shoemaker looked not unlike some Asiatic
conception of a deity.

Jerome always closed the door immediately when he entered, for Ozias
dreaded a draught, having an inclination to rheumatism, and being
also chilly, like most who sit at their labor. Then he would seat
himself on a stool, and close shoes, and listen when his uncle
talked, as he did constantly when once warmed to it. The little room
was lighted by a whale-oil lamp on the wall. On some nights the full
moonlight streamed in the three windows athwart the lamp-light. The
room got hotter and closer. Ozias now and then, as he talked,
motioned Jerome, who put another stick of wood in the stove. The
whole atmosphere, spiritual and physical, seemed to grow combustible,
and as if at any moment a word or a thought might cause a leap into
flame. A spirit of anarchy and revolution was caged in that little
close room, bound to a shoemaker's bench by the chain of labor for