Tubal Cain

me-polished wooden arms of a hickory chair. He was staring somberly, with an immobile, thin, dark countenance, at the white plaster wall before him. Close by hi

teel engraving of Chief Justice Marshall hung on the wall; and in a farther corner a careless pile of paper, folded in dockets or tied with casual string, was collecting a grey film o

Occasionally he swallowed dryly; his grip momentarily tightened on the chair, but his gaze was level. The afternoon waned; a sweet breath of flowering magnolia drifted in at the door; the light grew tender; a

NDER

ELOR

n edge of the sign and ripped it from its place. Then he went back and flung it bi

n a scrap of paper were the figures of his past year's activities. He had made something over nine hundred dollars. And he was thirty-four years old! Those facts, seen together, dinned failure in his brain. There wer

anything, was the matter with him. It was vague, but increasingly disturbing; he had described it with difficulty to Doctor Veneada, his onl

had said, "the dam

rowned out of

change. You are strung up. Go away. Forget the law for

ndition. He had had several letters, though, throughout a number of years, from James Claypole, a cousin of his mother, asking him out to Tubal Cain, the iron

expression of complete purpose, he had ended his practi

sand dollars in a year; and, as year after year slipped by without his accumulating that amount, their engagement had come to resemble the unemotional contact of a union without

swallowed up in the tide of irritability rising about him. He felt no active sorrow at the knowledge that he was about t

on him, an inchoate dread that he fought bitterly. It wasn't death from which Alexander Hulings shuddered, but a crawling sensation that turned his knees to dust. He was a slight man, with

eada entered. His neckcloth was, as always, carelessly folded, and his collar hid in rolls of fat;

ht you hadn't locked the office door. Come out; fill y

er Hulings followed th

" he said in response to

t his evening to see Hallie and she would be surprised when he came up on the step. The Flowers had supper at five; i

an would have quit long ago; but your infernal stubbornness held you to it. You are not a small-town man. You see life in a different, a wider way. And if you could only come on

I made a thousand in a year,"

ns when you say a thing. I think you're right about this. Go up to that fellow Claypole and show him what brittle stuff iron is compared to yourself. Seriously,

communicated to Alexander Hulings, and he was reli

ory. A gravel path divided a small lawn beyond a gate guarded by two stone greyhounds. Hallie emerged from the house with an expression of mil

ere on a Saturday?" They sat, without further imme

ds. He must get hold of himself. Hallie, to whom he was about to do irreparable harm, the kindest woman in existence! But he realized that whatever feeling he had had for her was gone for

Alexander Hulings felt the clumsy hand drawing tighter the string he had pictured himself as being; an

is, I am. The law's been no good; I mean, I h

rupted, astonishe

rds in waves of giddy insecurity. "Yes; for good. I'm no use h

in a tone of unpr

l never b

lly. He cursed himself, his impotence, bitterly. Now he wanted to get away; but there remained

her--" he

. The hand of death? Incredibly he lived through a stammering, racking period, in the m

re among his belongings a suggestion of any souvenir of the past, anything sentimental or charged with memory. A daguerreotype of Hallie Flower, in an embossed black case lined with red plush, he groun

Hulings got through that too; and was finally seated with Veneada in his light wagon, behind a clattering pair of young Hambletonians, with the trunk secured in the rear. Veneada was taking him

't just borrow any for cigars, if there ever comes a time when you need a few thousands, if you happen on something that looks good for both of us,

and fell affectionatel

uld clarify, grow more secure. He even neglected to issue a characteristic abrupt refusal of Veneada's implied offer of assistance; t

ation, on flat wooden tracks, dominated by a stout pole, t

, drove away. Already, he thought, he felt better; and he watched, with a faint stirring of normal

n bright yellow and staring blue. It stopped, with a fretful ringing and grinding impact of coach on coach. Alexander Hulings' trunk was shouldered to a roof; and after an inspection of

station or where cut wood was stacked to fire the engine, the choking hot waves of smoke, the shouted confabulations between the captain and the engineer, forward on his precarious ledge-all ad

erably in an obscure hole; Veneada probably wouldn't tell him the truth about his condition. What he most resented, with a tenuous spark of his customa

y, had himself used that word

ully wrought; and something in the word, its implied obduracy, fired his disintegrating mind. "Iron!" Unconsciously he spoke the word aloud. He was entirely ignorant of what, exactly, it

g and clustered houses merged on a silver expanse of river. It was Columbus, wher