The Hiding-Places; A Novel

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1917. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXV That was a refined torture which set the Sicilian flatterer under a sword hanging by a hair, to study a prince's feeling of security. Suspense! For weeks I was doomed to it. On that afternoon of bad news I finished my ploughing at five, and went horde to the chores. That day I felt no fatigue: the new worry keyed me up. The chores finished, while mother was still cooking supper I shaved, dressed for riding, and sat down to write Gertrude a masterpiece of a letter, brief and cutting. "Going riding?" asked mother when again I came to the kitchen. "It's time I came out of my shell," I replied. "I'm going to the post-office to-night." "I knew that something had happened," said mother, quiet and very certain. "Tell me." So I told her all the story, from the burning of the will (which till now I had suppressed) to Collester's news. I think it was not till then that I understood mother's great self-command. At father's death the torture of my conscience, together with my anger at Mr. Worthen, had blinded me to everything outside myself. But now I was able to recognize what the new danger must mean to mother, so deeply centred in the farm. She had no other place to turn to, for her childhood's home had long been broken up. But she took the news very quietly. "Let us remember," she said, "that to leave the farm is a plan which we have already once considered." "But I have fought one fraud against our ownership," I groaned. "I hate to yield to another." "We will yield," decided mother calmly, "if the first decision goes against us. Appeals may take ten years of your life, and then what are you but a soured and quarrelsome man? And what of the peace of my old age?" I knew that she was right, and even high-minded. But I could not help suggesting: "The last two b...