The unfathomable dispensation of idiocy, its irreconcilability with mundane theories of divine justice or mercy, its presentment at once repellent and grotesque, has its morbid effect when confronted with sanity. Harshaw was a man neither of delicate instincts nor of any subtle endowment, but the contemplation of the great vacant face grimacing at him, coupled with the singular influences of his reception, required a recollection of the anguished anxiety he had experienced, the sound of the rising wind without, the sight of the whirling dead leaves, the gathering gloom of the cloudy dusk, to reconcile him to the conditions of his refuge. “Well, my man,” he said, looking at the boy, “what’s _your_ name?” The idiot grinned importantly. “Tad,” he stuttered thickly,—“Tad Simpkins. What’s yourn?” Harshaw sat for a moment in stunned surprise. Then all the discomforts of the situation vanished before the triumphs of this discovery. This—this great, well-fed, hearty creature, the forlorn, maltreated idiot depicted by the evidence in Mink Lorey’s trial; this, the pitiable boy drowned in the mill like a rat in a trap; this, the elusive spectre of the attorney-general’s science! The next moment it occurred to him that he must use special caution here; the motives that had led these people to harbor the idiot, if not to conceal him, were suspicious, and favored his theory in the trial—which he had adopted more from the poverty of his resources than a full credulity—that the retirement of the boy reputed drowned was prompted by a deep-seated enmity to Mink Lorey. He turned to the woman, all his normal faculties on the alert. “Well, that’s a fact, Mrs. Simpkins; your son ain’t plumb bright,—I can see that,—but he’s right there. I ought to tell you _my_ name.” “Mine ain’t Simpkins,” said the woman suddenly, responding quickly to his clever touch, “an’ Tad thar ain’t my son.” She was mixing corn-meal batter for bread in a wooden bowl; she stirred it energetically as she went on with a sort of partisan acrimony: “Mebbe he ain’t bright, ez ye call it, but I ain’t never hearn o’ Tad doin’ a mean thing yit,—not ter the chill’n, nor dogs, nor cats, nor nuthin’. He may be lackin’ in the head, but he ain’t lackin’ in the heart; thar’s whar’s the complaint o’ mos’ folks ez ain’t idjits. I dunno which air held gifted in the sight o’ the Lord. ’Tain’t in human wisdom ter say. Tad’ll make a better show at the jedgmint day’n many folks ez ’low they hev hed thar senses through life.” “Ain’t no idjit, nuther,” protested Tad, gruffly.