Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-09-21
a,Chapter3 s

WA v ing out of the window
 M~ across the dim summer
 haze of heat. negligent. ly smoking. He could see the long white mari road bending in broad curve between clover stippled mead ows. to skirt the willow green bluff above the river. There, miles away, on the high bank he could distinguish the railroad bridge. a long black skel- eton spanning "the hole." deep, fish haunted pool. the deepest spot in the river for fifty miles.
 Since that moonlighted evening of the will making Harry had learned that the long lane had had no true turning for Hugh. He had sifted him through and through. At college he had put him down for weakling- unballasted, misdemeanant. Now he knew him for what he really was-a moral mollusk, a scamp in embryo. a decadent. realizing an ugly propensity to a deplorable finale. A consistent career of loose living had carried Hugh far since those college days when he had been dubbed "Satan's shadow" While to Harry Sanderson the eccentric and agnostical had then been. as 1t were. the mask through which his temperament looked at life, to Hugh 1t had spelled shipwreck. Harry Sanderson had done broadly as he pleased. He had entertained whom he listed. had gone stunning" had once boxed to a finish for a wager a local pugilist whose acquaintance he affected, known as Gentleman Jim" He had been both the hardest hitter and the hardest drinker in his class. yet withal its most brilliant student. Native character had enabled him to persist. as the exasperating function of success which dissipation declined to eliminate. But the same natural gravitation which in spite of all aber- ration had given Harry Sanderson classical honors had brought Hugh Stires to the imminent brink of expul- sion. And since that time, without the character which belonged to Har- " as a possession. Hugh had contin- ued to drift aimlessly on down the broad lax way of profigacy.
 The conditions he found upon his re turn. however. had opened Hugh's eyes to the perilous strait in which he stood. He was materialist, and the taste he had had of deprivation had sickened him. In the first revulsion, when the contrast between recent famine and present plenty was strong upon him, he had been at anxious pains to make himself secure with his father-ard with Jessica Holme liar rvs mental sight-keen as the hunters sight on the rife barrel-wes sharpen ed by his knowledge of the old Hugh. m infultivs Knowledge gained in . significant formative period He saw . more clearly than the townfolk who in general way had known Hugh Stires all their lives. Week by week Harry had seen him regain lost ground in his fathers esteem. Day by day he had seen him making studi- ous appeal to all that was romantic in Jesstca, climbing to the favor of each on the ladder of the others regard. Hugh was naturally poseur, with a keen sense of effect He could be brilliant at will, could play a little on piano. banjo and violin. could sing little and had himself well in hand. And, feeling the unconscious chord of romance vibrate to his touch, he had played upon it with DO unskillful 6n- gers.
 Jessica was comparatively free from that coquetry by means of which a wo. mans instinct experiments in emotion. Although she had been artist enough before the cloistered years of her blind ness to know that she was comedy. she had never employed that beauty in the ordinary blandishments of girlish fas- cination. But steadily and unconscious ly she had turned in her darkness more and more to the bright and ten der air with which Hugh clothed all their intercourse. Her blindness had been of too short duration to have de veloped that fine sense-perception with which nature seeks to supplement the darkened vision. The ineradicable marks which i'll governed living had set in Hugh's face. the self indulgence and egotism. she could not see. She mistook impulse for instinct She read him by the untrustworthy light of a colorful ina gination. She deemed him