Nicholas took a step forward, still facing his father with obstinate eyes. One of the books slipped from his arm and fell to the floor, with open leaves, but he let it lie. He was watching his father's jaws as they rose and fell over the quid of tobacco. "No, there is not much cash in that," he repeated. "Things have gone mighty hard," said Amos Burr. "It's been a bad year. I ain't sayin' nothin' 'bout the work yo' ma an' Sairy Jane an' me have done. That don't seem to count, somehow. But nothin' ain't come straight, an' thar ain't a cent to pay the taxes. If we can't manage to tide over this comin' winter thar'll have to be a mortgage in the spring." Sairy Jane began to cry softly. One of the children joined in. "Give me time," said Nicholas breathlessly. "Give me time. I'll pay it all in time." Then the sound of Sairy Jane's sobs maddened him and he turned upon her with an oath. "Damn you! Can't you be quiet?" It seemed to him that they were all closing upon him and that there was no opening of escape. Marthy Burr put down her iron and came to where he stood, laying her hand upon his sleeve. "Don't mind 'em, Nick," she said, and her sharp voice broke suddenly. "Go ahead an' make a man of yo'self, mortgage or no mortgage." Nicholas lifted his gaze from the floor and looked into his stepmother's face. Then he looked at her hand as it lay upon his arm. That trembling hand brought to him more fully than words, more clearly than visions, the pathos of her life. "Don't you worry, ma," he said quietly at last. "It'll be all right. Don't you worry." Then he let her hand slip from his shoulder and left the room. He passed out upon the back porch and stood gazing vacantly across the outlook. It rained heavily, the drops descending in horizontal lengths like a fantastic fall of colourless pine needles. Overhead the clouds were black, impenetrable. Through the falling rain he looked at the view before him, at the overgrown yard, at the manure heaps near the stable, at the grim rows of staves in the peanut field, at the sombre and deserted landscape. A raw wind blew in gusts from the northeast, and the distorted ailanthus tree in the yard moaned and wrung its twisted limbs. Sharp, unpleasant odours came from the pig-pen in the barnyard, where the rain was scattering the slops in the trough. A bull bellowed in a far-off pasture. Before the hen-house door several dripping fowls strutted with wilted feathers. He saw it all in silence, with the dogged eyes of one whose gaze is turned inward. He made no gesture, uttered no exclamation. He was as motionless as the lintel of the door on which he leaned. Suddenly a gust of wind whipped the rain into his face. He turned, reentered the house, closed the door carefully, and went upstairs. III The next morning Nicholas went into the judge's study and declined the offer of the day before.