ting-house, and in the afternoon they were hung out on the line to
dry. The heads of the families sat in their front yards and dutifully
tended the children, while their wives flitted from house to house,
visiting the sick and the afflicted, and administering warnings to the
delinquent. It was a day in which Mrs. Gusty's soul reveled, and she
demanded that Guinevere's soul should revel likewise.

It was with the determination that Guinevere should occasionally be
allowed the privilege of following her own inclinations that Hinton
hurled himself into the breach.

"I'll go, Mother," said Guinevere; "but it's so hot. We went to see
everybody last Sunday. I thought I'd rather stay home and read, if you
didn't mind."

Mrs. Gusty tossed her head in disgust, and turned to Hinton.

"Now, ain't that a Gusty for you! I never saw one that didn't want to
set down to the job of living. Always moping around with their nose in a
book. I never was a reader, never remember wasting a' hour on a book in
my life, and yet I never saw the time that I wasn't able to hold my own
with any Gusty living."

"In short," said Hinton, sympathetically, "to quote a noted novelist,
you have never considered it necessary to add the incident of learning
to the accident of brains."

Mrs. Gusty tied her bonnet-strings in a firmer knot as she looked at him
uncertainly, then, not deigning to cast another glance in the direction
of her daughter, who was disappearing up the stairs, swept out of the
house.

Hinton looked at his watch; it was not yet two o'clock. The afternoon
threatened to be a foretaste of eternity. He went out on the porch and
lay in the hammock, with his hands clasped across his eyes. He could no
longer see to read or to write. The doctor said the darkness might close
in now at any time, after that the experiment of an operation would be
made, and there was one chance in a hundred for the partial restoration
of the sight.

Having beaten and bruised himself against the bars of Fate, he now lay
exhausted and passive in the power of his jailer. He had tried to run
his own life in his own way, and the matter had been taken out of his
hands. He must lie still now and wait for orders from headquarters. The
words of Mr. Opp, spoken in the low-ceiled, weird old dining-room, came
vividly back to him: "What the fight is concerning, or in what manner
the general is a-aiming to bring it all correct in the end, ain't,
according to my conclusion,