Mark Radley was a lad of sixteen, tall, broad-shouldered, and rather good-looking, with brown eyes and curly brown hair. He was an orphan, his father having died when he was but five years old and his mother departing this life when the boy was fourteen. Mark had had two sisters, but both had died when quite young. When Mark was ten years of age, Mrs. Radley had met and married Jadell Powers, a man ten years her senior, and known in Philadelphia as a fairly successful lawyer. Powers was a widower, having one son, who had run away from home when out of grammar school. Those who had dealings with him knew him to be very irritable and a good deal of a miser, but Mrs. Radley knew nothing of his shortcomings until they were married several months. Then her eyes were opened, and for four years--up to the day of her death--she suffered much, but always in silence. Almost from the start, Mark could not get along with his step-father, and boy and man had more than one open quarrel and on three different occasions the youth was on the point of running away, but the presence of his mother deterred him. When Mrs. Radley died Mark felt he was free, but much to his consternation he was given to understand that his mother had made no will and that his step-father had legal rights in the property which could not be ignored. By slick management Jadell Powers had himself made Mark's guardian. "You must toe the mark after this, young man," said the lawyer, after matters had been adjusted. Then he took Mark out of high school and made the boy enter his law office, although Mark did not take to a legal calling in the slightest degree. "I wish I had hold of my money, I'd travel a bit before settling down," Mark told his friend Carl. But Mark got hold of very little cash, and so had to stick at the office grind, week in and week out, winter and summer. Once in a great while he slipped away--to play ball or go fishing--but this always brought on a good scolding from his step-father. "Boys nowadays want to play, they don't want to work," grumbled Jadell Powers. And then he would give Mark copying and other work to do that would keep the lad busy until nine or ten o'clock at night. Two days before the opening of this story the boy and his step-father had had some hot words concerning several legal documents which Mark had copied. Mr. Powers had given directions to have them transcribed in a certain way. Mark had followed directions, and then the lawyer said that was not the way at all. In his rage Jadell Powers had threatened to thrash Mark and had taken up a book to throw at the boy's head. But Mark had stood his ground. "You hit me and I'll hit you!" he cried, pale with resentment, and the look in Mark's eye made the lawyer drop the volume on his desk. There the quarrel rested, but it was not settled by any means.