e done nothing, that I
know of; but you don't know what rough words he says to me sometimes,
and I have been almost afraid that he would strike me with that heavy
hand! I believe I should _die_ if he did."

"No, child, you would not _die_, I think," said the more practical Aunt,
"but something might occur for which your father would one day be quite
as sorry--your last particle of love and respect for him might die, and
that would be sadder than the death of many bodies. But come, Emily; we
shall be called again in a moment."

Aunt and niece descended the stairs to the parlor, the latter trembling
like a leaf in the wind and the former in a strange flutter that was
part trepidation and part indignation. They found affairs in the parlor
in a very promising condition, as the aunt had suspected. Judge Owen was
too angry to sit in his large chair, as he would have liked to do, and
receive the culprits with judicial dignity. He was walking the floor,
with his hands behind his back and every indication of very stormy
weather on his countenance. He looked bigger and more burly than ever,
and less than ever like what the brother and father should have been, to
the two who entered. Mrs. Owen sat in a rocking-chair, swaying backward
and forward, with her hand to her eyes and very much the appearance of a
whipped child who had been set down in that chair with orders to be
"good." It was not supposable that the Judge had been whipping her,
physically; but he had unquestionably been "getting his hand in" for the
exercise that was to come, by reading her a severe lecture upon
everything that she had done and everything she had _not_ done, since
the day they were married.

"So then!" he broke out, the moment the culprits appeared in view. "This
is the kind of order you keep in my house--_my_ house!" and he
emphasized the possessive pronoun so severely that the poor little word
must have had a hard time of it among his strong front teeth.

Emily, as yet, replied nothing. But Aunt Martha said:

"Well really, brother, I do not see that the house is in very bad order!
Perhaps that rocker is a little out of place, and the _etagere_--"

"D--n it, woman, I am not talking of the furniture, and you know it!"
thundered the Judge.

"William Owen!" said Aunt Martha, who had not gone through fifty or a
hundred such conflicts without deriving some controversial profit from
them--"I do not choose to be sworn at, in _your_ house or the house o