The Damnation of Theron Ware

richest man in Octavius. There was no doubt at a

w some version of the many tales afloat which, in a kindly spirit, illustrated the incongruity between him and his splendid habitation. Some had it that he slept in the shed. Others told whimsical stories of his sitting alone in the kitchen evenings, smoking his old c

ars or so older than himself, also a Madden and distantly related, had started in despair off across the mountains to the town where it was said the poor-law officers were dealing out food. He could recall her coming back next day, wild-eyed with hunger and the fever; the officers had refused her relief because her bare legs were n

as a journeyman first; then marriage and a house and lot; the modest start as a master; the move to Octavius and cheap lumber; the growth of his business, always marked of late years stupendous-all following naturally, easily, one thing out of another. Jeremiah encountered the idea among his fellows, now and again, that he was entitled to feel proud of all this. He smiled to himself at the

e long vertical upper-lip and irregular teeth made, in repose, an unshapely mouth; its smile, though, sweetened the whole countenance. He wore a fringe of stiff, steel-colored beard, passing from ear to ear under his chin. His week-day clothes were as simple as his workaday manners, fitting his short

ood, he generally extended his walk through the fields to an old deserted Catholic burial-field, which had been used only in the first years after the famine invasion, and now was clean forgotten. The old wagon-maker liked to look over the primitive, neglected stones which marked the graves of these earlier exiles. Fully half of the inscriptions mentioned his County Galway-there were two naming the very parish adjoining his. The latest date on any stone was of the remoter 'fifties. They had all been stricken down, here in this strange land with its bitter winters,

se had grown now into partners, and were almost as much a part of the big enterprise as Jeremiah himself. They spoke often of their inability to remember any unjust or petulant word of his-much less any unworthy deed. Once they had seen him in a great rage, all the more impressive because he said next to nothing. A thoughtless fellow told a dirty story in the presence of some apprentices; and

was surprise felt at his not being taken into the firm as a partner, he gave no hint of sharing it. He attended to his religious duties with great zeal, and was President of the Sodality as a matter of course. This was regarded as his blind side; and young employees who cultivated it, an

ndeed, at a good many schools, for no one seemed to manage to keep him long. He had been with the Jesuits at Georgetown, with the Christian Brothers at Manhattan; the sectarian Mt. St. Mary's and the severely secular Annapolis had both been tried, and proved misfits. The young man was home again now, and save that his name had become Theodore, he appeared in no wise changed from the beautiful, wilful, bold, and showy boy who h

derable reputation for piety. It was at a time when the expansion of his business was promising certain wealth, and suggesting the removal to Octavius. He was conscious of a notion that his obligations to social respectability were increasing; it was certain that

s temptations, but they made no mark on the even record of his life. He only worked the harder, concentrating upon his business those extra hours which another sort of home-life would have claimed instead. The end of twenty years found him a rich man, but still toiling pertinaciously day by day, as if he had his wage to earn. In the great house which had been built to please, or rather placate, his wife, he kept to himself as much as possible. The popular

. They could not think there had ever been anything like her before in the world; the notion

the father, four times a year, handed Michael a letter he had received from the superioress of a distant convent, referring with cold formality to the studies and discipline by which Miss Madden might profit more if she had been better brought up, and enclosing a large bill. Then all at once they beheld a big Celia, whom they spoke of as being home aga

s bills, than any other lady in the whole section. The flush of pride in her greatest achievement up to date-having the most celebrated of New York physicians brought up to Octavius by special train-still prickled in her blood. It was in all the papers, and the admiration of the flatterers and "soft-sawdherers"-wives of Irish merchants and smaller professional men who formed her social circle-was raising visions in her poor head of going ne

anny, the resolutions born of ignorant and jealous egotism, found themselves swept out of sight by the very first sw

ifferent. There was a note of unreality nowadays in Mrs. Donnelly's professions of wonder at her bearing up under her multiplied maladies; there was almost a leer of mockery in the sympathetic smirk with which the Misses Mangan listened to her symptoms. Even the doctors, though they kept their faces turned toward her, obviously did not pay much attention; the people in

any of her desires, for that matter. All existing arrangements in the Madden household seemed to shrink automatically and make room for her, whichever way she walked. A whole quarter of the unfinished house set it

she awakened them at midnight by her piano, or deferred her breakfast to the late afternoon, they felt that it must be all right, since Celia did it. She had one room furnished with only divans and huge, soft cushions, its walls covered with large copies of statuary not too strictly clothed, which she would suffer no one, not even the servants, to enter. Michael fancied sometimes, when he pa

the outset, but they grouped themselves as only parts of the general disorder of moving and settling, which a fort-night or so quite righted. Mrs. Madden still permitted herself a certain license of hostile comment when her step-daughter was not present, and listen

ese were even more exciting. The unlikelihood of her marrying any one-at least any Octavian-was felt to add a certain romantic zest to the image she made on the local perceptions. There was no visible young Irishman at all approaching the social and financial standard of the Maddens; it was taken for granted that a mixed marriage was quite out of the que

shioner dreamed of calling her friend. But when they referred to her, it was always with a cautious and respectful reticence. For one thing, she was the daughter of their chief man, the man they most esteemed and loved. For another, reservations they may have had in their souls about her touched close upon a delicately sore spot. It could not escape their notice that their Protestant

aught even the faintest hint o

of the gloom. To his right was a rail and some broad steps rising toward a softly confused mass of little gray vertical bars and the pale twinkle of tiny spots of gilded reflection, which he made out in the dusk to b

g into the darkness like giants. They were roaring at him now-a sonorous, deafening, angry bellow, which made everything about him vibrate. The gallery balustrade hid the keyboard and the organist from view. There were only these jostling brazen tubes, as big round as trees an

erable racket. On the instant the noise from the organ ceased, and he s

itable voice of Miss M

ng and running. With the best grace he could

ming down," she returned. He thought th

heron could barely see in the dark, now that the organ-light too was go

: "Walk on ahead, Michael!" she said. "I ha