To him, above all, a simple, practical man, this change of mental attitude was almost unbearable. What a morbid mind might have contemplated in quiet meditation now flashed upon him as a sudden terror. Never would he have thought that there might be somewhere, deeply hidden in life, things which were stronger than the power of the human will and intellect. Nowadays, after the nightmare which he had so courageously defeated, it seemed to him that the nightmare had sapped his strength nevertheless and inoculated him with every sort of weakness. It was incredible, but now, as he sat working late in the day, he would listen to the evening voices in the garden, or to the rat that rustled overhead. And then he would suddenly get up, go to Léonie's room and look under the bed. When he at last discovered that many of the anonymous letters by which he was persecuted came from the pen of a half-caste who described himself as his son and was even known in the compound by his own surname, he felt too doubtful to investigate the matter, because of what might come to light that he had himself forgotten, dating from his controllership, from the old days, at Ngadjiwa. He was doubtful now of things of which he had once been certain and positive. Nowadays he was no longer able so positively to order his recollections of that period as to swear that he had not a son, begotten almost unconsciously in those days. He did not clearly remember the housekeeper who had looked after him before his first marriage. And he preferred to let the whole business of the anonymous letters smoulder in the dusky shadows, rather than stir it up and enquire into it. He even caused money to be sent to the native who called himself his son, so that the fellow might not abuse the name which he arrogated to himself and demand presents all over the compound: chickens and rice and clothes, things which Si-Oudijck exacted from ignorant villagers, whom he threatened with the vague anger of his father the sahib, yonder at Labuwangi. In order that there might be no more threats of this anger, Van Oudijck sent him money. It was weak of him: he would never have done it in the old days. But now he had an inclination to hush things up, to gloss over things, to be less stern and severe and rather to mitigate anything unduly strict by half-measures. Eldersma was sometimes amazed when he saw the resident, who used to be so firm, hesitating, when he saw him yielding in matters of business, in differences with crown tenants, as he had never done before. And slack methods of work would gradually have found their way automatically into the office, if Eldersma had not taken the work out of Van Oudijck's hands and given himself even more to do than he already had. It was generally stated that the resident was ill. And, in fact, his skin was yellow; his liver was painful; the least thing set his nerves quivering. It unsettled the house, in conjunction