choking over the words, "that you've given me as much of Fletcher
as I can stand and a long sight more than I want. If anybody but
you had brought me that piece of paper with Bill Fletcher's name
tagged to it I'd have rammed it down his throat before this. As
it is, you may tell him from me that when I have paid him to the
last drop what I owe him--and not till then--will I listen to any
message he chooses to send me. I hate him, and that's my affair;
I mean to be even with him some day, and I reckon that's my
affair, too. One thing I'm pretty sure of, and that is that it's
not yours. Is your visit over, or will you come into the house?"

"I'll be going back now," replied the lawyer, shrinking from the
outburst, "but if I may have the pleasure, I'll call upon your
mother in the morning."

Christopher shook the hand which he held out, and then spoke
again in the same muffled voice. "You may tell him one thing
more," he pursued, "and that is, that it's the gospel truth I
didn't know it was his grandson in the wagon. Why, man, there's
not a Fletcher on this earth whose neck I'd lift my little finger
to save!"

Then, as Carraway passed slowly along the ragged path to the
sunken road, he stood looking after him with a heavy frown upon
his brow. His rage was at white heat within him, and, deny it as
he would, he knew now that within the last few weeks his hatred
had been strengthened by the force of a newer passion which had
recoiled upon itself. Since his parting with Maria Fletcher the
day before, he had not escaped for a breath from her haunting
presence. She was in his eyes and in the air he breathed; the