CHAPTER I
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t was about six o'clock of a winter's morning. In the eastern sky faintstreaks of grey had come and were succeeded by flashes of red, crimson-cloaked heralds of the coming day. It had snowed the day before, but awarm wind had sprung up during the night, and the snow had partiallymelted, leaving the earth showing through in ugly patches of yellow clayand sooty mud. Half despoiled of their white mantle, though with enoughof it left to stand out in bold contrast to the bare places, the houses loomedup, black, dripping, and hideous. Every once in a while the wind caught thewater as it trickled from the eaves, and sent it flying abroad in a chillunsparkling spray. The morning came in, cold, damp, and dismal. At the end of a short, dirty street in the meanest part of the small Ohiotown of Dexter stood a house more sagging and dilapidated in appearancethan its disreputable fellows. From the foundation the walls converged tothe roof, which seemed to hold its place less by virtue of nails and raftersthan by faith. The whole aspect of the dwelling, if dwelling it could becalled, was as if, conscious of its own meanness, it was shrinking away fromits neighbours and into itself. A sickly light gleamed from one of thewindows. As the dawn came into the sky, a woman came to the door andlooked out. She was a slim woman, and her straggling, dusty-coloured hairhung about an unpleasant sallow face. She shaded her eyes with her hand,as if the faint light could hurt those cold, steel-grey orbs. "It's mornin'," shesaid to those within. "I 'll have to be goin' along to git my man's breakfast:he goes to work at six o'clock, and I 'ain't got a thing cooked in the housefur him. Some o! the rest o' you 'Il have to stay an’ lay her out.” She wentback in and closed the door behind her. "La, Mis' Warren, you ain't a-goin' a'ready? Why, there 's everything to be 7
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