THE UNWELCOME MAN THE UNWELCOME MAN _A NOVEL_ BY WALDO FRANK BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1917 _Copyright, 1917_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved_ Published, January, 1917 Printers B. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A. TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER PART ONE THE UNWELCOME MAN THE UNWELCOME MAN I It threatened a Christmas of wet winds and heavy moods. The air was sluggish. Winter had died to a tepid dampness. Snowdrifts were mire; and where had been clear skies was now a dull and lowering shroud. It was as if, at its last effort, the year had lost heart and purpose. There was a note of spiritual sagging in this turn from the exuberance of cold to a siege of muddy rivulets and stagnant vapors and grey trees. The brilliant storm that had swept the country white was now a scourge of swamp upon the land-side. And through the minor harmony of dripping leafage and fulsome roads and drench-stained houses came a fret of chill, too slight to retrieve the season from its languor, yet real enough to stultify the warmth. This was the setting of Quincy’s birth. * * * * * In from Main Street and away from the salt air that fluttered toward it like a curtain’s fringe, a paltry, sordid stretch of lights; a road much rutted by last summer’s traffic; a straggling array of shops, saloons, dim and bedraggled with the rain--the heart of Harriet, Long Island. And then, a narrow street, loomed over by great oaks and screening cedars alien in this regardless majesty of Nature to the pot-like, worried houses that lay back in it, making their presence known with faint streaks of lights that fretted the calm gloom like human breath in a black dungeon. Beyond, scarce glimpsed, a rising motley of blue snow and rock,--a meadow. And just before this termination, where a sharp street-lamp ceased to blink against the vapors and the trees stopped,--the House. Irregular flagstones as a path to it through oozing sod that would be unkempt grass in June. A leak of orange lamp-light through the porch; another, faint from the upper story; a stocky shadow of façade, thrust in the more minor darkness. This was the spot upon which Quincy was born. * * * * *