The autumn came in ruggedly--an autumn of storms, of flurries of snow, of bleak winds and driving rains. Under its breath the last trace of the plague vanished; the fugitives returned; normal life and trade were resumed; and in the hurry and bustle the terrors of the late summer were forgotten. The winter followed--a raging, boisterous, blowing winter, with deep snow in the wagon-ways, and ice in the river, the chimneys smoking, and the carts piled high with cord-wood. At Rufus Stevens' Sons there had been no great briskness after the season of pestilence. There was a movement of trade through its warehouses and counting-rooms; but it was a dull movement, without rush or volume, with no ring of money in it, and no whetting of ideas. Anthony had a feeling that things were crumbling under him; the stout old walls were buckling. A ship of the firm's owning was held at Rio by the Portuguese because of the house's failure to pay certain moneys long due; another, lately repaired and cleaned at Barbados, was not permitted to sail until all debts were cleared; each ship that entered port from the East and South carried letters to the house from merchants and traders, shippers and agents, asking that settlements be made; and local merchants grew insistent that their accounts be dealt with forthwith. There was a steady crowding in, a pressing, a squeezing, and the wide-lunged old concern had no room to breathe; its slow methods, its calm reliance upon its own integrity, its ponderous insistence upon its own power had much the look of impotence. People who had inherited their belief in the house now observed it keenly; and what they saw made them shake their heads. Charles came and went and planned for the future; of the succession of days that broke and waxed and waned he said nothing, except in that they served as things upon which to base calculations of what the ship _Rufus Stevens_ was likely to be doing on the other side of the world. "She must have made her port in three months," said Charles. "With that hull and spread of sail, and mastered as she is, she couldn't help it, unless the winds blew contrary every day. She'll surprise them in the East, I think. The Yankees have sent nothing like her, and the British are out-hulled and out-stowed, two to one." He'd sit for hours, silent, still, a smile upon his face, his look many and many a league away in the track of the trades, across the warm, long waves of the Indian Ocean, past far lands and strange ships. There the very stars were new and had alien names; the horned moon swung downward like a yellow sword-blade; the sea and air were filled with grotesque life. What ports he came to! how they shrieked and strove and teemed and smelled! the stones were worn by generations of bare feet; the narrow ways roared with traffic, set toward the rivers; the deep warehouses were like rich mines; the merchants were grave of face and wore silken robes.