e replied to his
great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed
out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on
his apprenticeship.

In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served
other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught
nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his
great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed
hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness
reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had
outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought
to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff
and his comrades gave Prince Hal.

The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of
his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris
Ford was found dead in his bed--shot in his sleep. On the premises there
had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the
crime--Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had
been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them
beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered,
was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became
easy after that--the more respectable people of the neighborhood being
agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn.
The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so
thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the
clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen,
admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never
suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting
chance for freedom.

The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though
it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport
during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But
when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly.
Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting,
while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless
gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were
wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a mediu