When some person has been the provoking cause of emotions so strong that the mind can not shake off their grasp, it is quick to misconceive that person. Quarry’s voice was a shock to Emma when at last she heard it in the yard, although a short time ago she had seen and had speech with him. Her heart sank when she found he was talking with himself and in a laudatory strain. His effort was to walk straight, but his accomplishment was slight. He lurched to and from either marigold border, so that the walk seemed serpentine to Emma’s shocked gaze. “No,” he said, “the ruins is covered with ivory; I shall pluck away the vine, and the presspit is discovered.” He spoke as he walked, doing as much as possible at each lucid interval between lapses. “No friend shall fall away into the presspit, like I nearly did.” His fall was upon nothing more precipitous than the chair by the door. Seeing anger on Emma’s face, he attempted to soothe her with vague smiles of fearful extent; they travelled swiftly across his flushed face and divided it into north and south intemperate zones. “Stop _that_,” called Emma; “you’ve done enough!” “Not yet!” shouted Quarry, impelled by an erratic enthusiasm; “I’ll do more for my Emma. I’ve laid out the money real well. We’ll buy the deepo and live in it! It’s the finest house in Soot City, and if you want Jarlsen too, you can keep him for hired help. I don’t want there should be any stinting where love is king.” “Give me my wallet,” said Emma. “I have given it where it’ll do the most good. The town rejoices that a good deed was done. Mine the deed though not the money.” He used this phrase as a sort of chant. “Quarry,” said Emma sternly, “sober up, and think true for a minute!” But he interrupted to say: “Sober up? Emma, you’re enough to turn a saint. I am so sober that the boys laugh at me the way they done at Jarlsen, and I’ve done the wonderfullest thing! Money’ll be so loose you can pick it up off anything in such a little while! I invested yours in a great concern; it’s safe. I’m at the head of it!” He finished, with some tardy regard for truth, and, waving his arms comprehensively, lapsed again into vagueness. “Where did you put it?” Emma uttered her queries with pains, as if she put them to a foreigner. Then came lavish excuse. “I put it in an investment,” said he. He was a little sobered now, and wore a scared look. “Mr. Jarlsen, ’fore he was took with the blast, got me to promise to invest his money. He had a pulmonition of the blast, so he did.” Emma looked at him again; her face was white and hopeless, and its young modelling seemed aged and heavy. “You ain’t gone and sunk that altogether, Quarry, hev you? If you hev, there’s only the Stonepastures left. It’ll be a hard thing to pass the Bridge once for all and see your work-fellers comin’ through on the cars, and you only comin’ es fur es the Pastures from the factory. Can’t you think what you done with it?”