"Your money!" said Sillbrook, with a loud laugh. "That's a crazy joke! Come, my man, you're drunk. Get out of here, or I'll have you put where you can make your jokes to yourself."
"You think you're rich enough now to speak to me as you choose," said Amos hotly. "Time was when you wouldn't have dared. But I tell you, Jason Sillbrook, I've come to my senses to-night. It's a poor bargain where the gain's all on one side. We started even, and you've got all and I nothin'. But I tell you now, that, heaven helpin' me, you'll never have another dollar o' mine to spend. You'll never buy another coat like this out o' my money," and he struck in sudden passion the seal-trimmed garment which covered Sillbrook's ample proportions.
"Be off with you," said the saloon-keeper. "You're too drunk to know what you're talking about."
"And who made me drunk? answer that question, Jason Sillbrook," screamed Amos.
"I'll answer nothing," said Sillbrook, and, tearing his coat from the grasp Amos had laid upon it, he strode up the path and disappeared within the house.
The next morning, when the superintendent made his round of the mill, he missed one of the machine hands.
"Where's Derby?" he asked, angrily.
No one could answer his question. No one had seen Derby that day. And no one at the mill saw him for many a day to come.
"I might have been kinder to him," thought Jane, when at last she became convinced that her husband had in truth left her. "Perhaps I did say more'n I should at times. Poor Amos! he was no more to blame than I was, after all. Perhaps he would have kept out o' that saloon if I'd only coaxed 'stead o' railing at him. He wasn't bad-hearted, an' he never meant more'n half he said."
And as the days went by, and she forgot her past sorrows, she had only kind thoughts of her absent husband, and blamed only herself for their mutual misery. She wished with all her heart that she could "begin all over again," and try the effect of kindness and forbearance on Amos.