One of the miseries of the very ignorant is, paradoxically, the partial character of their privation. If the unknown were to them practically non-existent they might find solace in sluggish and secure content. But even the smallest circle of being touches continually the periphery of wider spheres. The air is freighted with echoes of undistinguished sounds. Powers, illimitable, absolute, uncomprehended, seem to hold an inimical sway over their lives and of these the most dreaded is the benign law, framed for their protection, spreading above them an unperceived, unimagined aegis. Thus there was hardly an article in the house which was not exempt by statute from execution, and the house itself and land worth only a hundred or two dollars were protected by the homestead law. The facetious deputy, Clem Tweed, with "Christmas in his bones," would have committed a misdemeanor in seriously levying upon them. He had held the affair as a capital farce--even affecting with wild, appropriating gambols to seize the baby and the cat--and fully realized that malice only had prompted the whole proceeding, to humiliate Ross Gilhooley and illustrate the completeness of the victory which Peter Petrie had won over his enemy. The younger Gilhooley, however, quaked as his limited intelligence laid hold on the fact that if the law had permitted a levy on the household goods to satisfy the judgment of Peter Petrie their destruction was in itself a balking of the process, resistance to the law, and with an unimagined penalty. "We-uns hev got ter git away from hyar somehows!" he said with decision. The idea of bluff Ross Gilhooley in the clutches of the law because of one fierce moment of goaded and petulant despair, with the ignominy of a criminal accusation, with all the sordid concomitants of arrest and the jail, was infinitely terrible to his unaccustomed imagination. He revolted from its contemplation with a personal application. For an honest man, however poor, feels all the high prerogatives of honor. There was a step in the shed-room where Ross Gilhooley had lurked and listened. His wrath now spent, his mind had traveled the obvious course to his son's conclusion. He stood a gigantic, bearded shadow in the doorway, half ashamed, wholly repentant, dimly, vaguely fearful, and all responsive and quivering to the idea of flight. "I been studyin' some 'bout goin' ter Minervy Sue's in Georgy," he said creakingly, as if his voice had suffered from its unwonted disuse. "An' none too soon," said Bruce doggedly. "The oxen is Medory's, bein' lef' ter her whenst her dad died, an' the wagin is mine! Quit foolin' along o' that thar fire, Medory!" For with her bright hair hanging curling over her cheeks his young wife had leaned forward to start it anew.