"'Father, father, you want to sell them,' I screamed. 'My mother's jewels; my dead mother's jewels!'
"He looked at me; this protest had succeeded in entering his ears, and his eye, which had been simply eager, became all at once dangerous.
"'I do not care whose they were,' he hissed, 'so long as they are now mine. It is money I want, and money I will have, and if they will get it for me you had better be thankful. Otherwise I shall have to find some other way to raise it.'
"I was cowed; he did not say what other way, but I knew by his look I had better not drive him into it, so I went to the place where I kept these sacred relics, and taking them out, laid them in his trembling, outstretched hand.
"'Are these all?' he asked. And I wondered, for he had never shown the least shrewdness in any matter connected with money before.
"'All but a trivial little locket which Emma wears,' said I.
"'Is it worth much?'
"'Scarcely five dollars,' I returned.
"'Five dollars would buy the bit of platinum I want,' he muttered. But he did not ask for the locket, for I saw it on Emma's neck the next day.
"This was the beginning of a fresh struggle. My father begrudged us everything: the food we ate; the plain, almost homely, clothes we wore. He himself wellnigh starved his own body, and when in the midst of an experiment, his most valuable retort broke in his hand, you could have heard his shriek of dismay all over the house. The following Sunday he did not go to church; he no longer had a coat to wear; he had sold his only broadcloth suit to a wandering pedlar.