the whisky touched his lips, the other struck out suddenly and
sent the glass shivering to the floor. "Go home, you fool!" he
cried, "and keep clear of me for good and all."

A moment afterward he had passed from the room, through the
store, and was out upon the road.



CHAPTER VIII. Between the Devil and the Deep Sea

There was a cheerful blaze in the old lady's parlour, and she was
sitting placidly in her Elizabethan chair, the yellow cat dozing
at her footstool. Lila paced slowly up and down the room, her
head bent a little sideways, as she listened to Tucker's cheerful
voice reading the evening chapter from the family Bible. His
crutch, still strapped to his right shoulder, trailed behind him
on the floor, and the smoky oil lamp threw his eccentric shadow
on the whitewashed wall, where it hung grimacing like a grotesque
from early Gothic art.

"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown
it," he read in his even tones; "if a man would give all the
substance of his house for love, it would utterly be condemned."

The old lady tapped the arm of her chair and turned her sightless
eyes upon the Bible, as if Solomon in person stood there awaiting
judgment.

"I always liked that verse, brother," she remarked, "though I am