CHAPTER I.
——"Consider this,—
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation:"—
It was early spring, the maples were but budding, the birds newly come and restless, the sky more gray than blue, and the air still sharp with a tang of frost. Jamestown's streets, however, looked both bright and busy.
Groups of children went to school, hurrying out to the street, and looking this way and that for a companion. A mother came to a gate with a little girl, and pointing now to right, now to left, seemed to give her directions which way to go. The little girl started bravely. She wore a pink cap, and carried a new school-bag. "Hurry on!" a girl called to her, and she advanced uncertainly. A hesitating dignity born of the new school-bag forbade a decided run; her friend's haste forbade her to linger. They met and passed on together.
An old man, with ophthalmia, feeling his way with a stick and muttering to himself with loose lips, went by. Two brothers crossed the street together, one swinging along easily, smoking a pipe, and carrying an axe over his shoulder; the other advancing with that spasmodic appearance of haste which seems the only gait to which crutches can be compelled.
An alert dog rushed madly up the middle of the street, pausing abruptly now and then to look round him with sharp interrogation, as if daring anything to "come on!" His challenge was vain, and he was fain to solace himself by scattering a convention of sparrows, dashing into the midst of them and sending the birds up into the maples, followed by insulting yelps, in reply to which they twittered in derision.
Homer Wilson drove his team of heavy brown horses through the street at a trot, his sinewy frame clad in weather-beaten blue jeans, his hat pushed far back on his head, as if to emphasize the defiant breadth of his forehead.
The woman still strained her eyes after the little girl, now only distinguishable by the brightness of her cap. They say that mothers often watch by the gateways of life.
The groceryman passed to open his store—the baker and butcher were already busy.
Through this scene of busy commonplace interest and bustle passed a woman, somewhat below the average height, and of strong but symmetrical build. Her face was down-bent and almost hidden in the depths of a dark sunbonnet of calico. All that could well be discerned in this shadow were two soft, sorrowful eyes, pale cheeks, and down-drooped lips. No one spoke to her, and she addressed no one. She went from place to place, out of one shop into another, with downcast eyes, and with something of that swift directness with which a bird, startled from its nest at evening, darts with folded wings from covert to covert. She was Myron Holder—a mother, but not a wife.