“Yes, sir,” said Jerome.

“You can come fer the shoes and bring ’em home after dark, so’s nobody will see you,” said Ozias Lamb, further.

So it befell that Jerome went for the work that brought him daily bread, like a thief, by night, oftentimes slipping his package of shoes under the wayside bushes at the sound of approaching footsteps.  He was deceitfully reticent also with his mother, whom he let follow her own conclusion, that Cyrus Robinson had been dissatisfied with their work.  “Guess he won’t see as much difference with this work as he think he does,” she would often say, with a bitter laugh.  Jerome was silent, but the inborn straightforwardness of the boy made him secretly rebellious at such a course.

“It’s lyin’, anyhow,” he said, sulkily, once, when he loaded the shoes on his shoulder, like a mason’s hod, and was starting forth from his uncle’s shop.

Ozias Lamb laughed the laugh of one who perverts humor, and makes a jest of the bitter instead of the merry things of life.

“It’s got so that lies are the only salvation of the righteous,” said Ozias Lamb, with that hard laugh of his.  Then, with the pitilessness of any dissenting spirit of reform, who will pour out truths, whether of good or evil, to the benefit or injury of mankind, who will force strong meat as well as milk on babies and sucklings, he kept on, while the boy stood staring, shrinking a little, yet with young eyes kindling, from the bitter frenzy of the other.

“It’s so,” said Ozias Lamb.  “You’ll find it out for yourself, in the hard run you’ve got to hoe, without any help, but it’s just as well for you to know it beforehand.  You won’t get bit so hard—­forewarned’s forearmed.  Snakes have their poison-bags, an’ bees have their stings; there ain’t an animal that don’t have horns or claws or teeth to use if they get in a hard place.  Them that don’t have weapons have wings, like birds.  If they can’t fight, they can fly away from the battle.  But human beings that are good, and meek, and poor, and hard pushed, they hain’t got any claws or any wings; though if they had ’twouldn’t be right to use ’em to fight or get away, so the parsons say.  They ’ain’t got any natural weapons.  Providence ’ain’t looked out for them.  All they can do, as far as I can see, is to steal some of the devil’s own weapons to fight him with.”

It was well that Jerome could not understand the half of his uncle’s harangue, and got, indeed, only a general impression of the unjust helplessness of a meek and righteous man in the hands of adverse fate, compared with horned and clawed animals, and Ozias’s system of defence did not commend itself to his understanding.  He did not for a moment imagine that his uncle advised him to lie and steal to better his fortunes, and, indeed, nothing was further from the case.  Ozias Lamb’s own precepts never went into practice.  He was scrupulously honest, and his word was as good as a bond.  However, although Ozias had never told a lie in his life, he had perpetrated many subtleties of the truth.  He was wily and secretive.  “A man ain’t a liar because he don’t tell all he knows,” he said.