As I came up the steps I had a glimpse of Mr. Gabbitas printing photographs by candle light in his room.  It was the chief delight of his little life to spend his holiday abroad in the company of a queer little snap-shot camera, and to return with a great multitude of foggy and sinister negatives that he had made in beautiful and interesting places.  These the camera company would develop for him on advantageous terms, and he would spend his evenings the year through in printing from them in order to inflict copies upon his undeserving friends.  There was a long frameful of his work in the Clayton National School, for example, inscribed in old English lettering, “Italian Travel Pictures, by the Rev. E. B. Gabbitas.”  For this it seemed he lived and traveled and had his being.  It was his only real joy.  By his shaded light I could see his sharp little nose, his little pale eyes behind his glasses, his mouth pursed up with the endeavor of his employment.

“Hireling Liar,” I muttered, for was not he also part of the system, part of the scheme of robbery that made wages serfs of Parload and me?—­though his share in the proceedings was certainly small.

“Hireling Liar,” said I, standing in the darkness, outside even his faint glow of traveled culture. . .

My mother let me in.

She looked at me, mutely, because she knew there was something wrong and that it was no use for her to ask what.

“Good night, mummy,” said I, and kissed her a little roughly, and lit and took my candle and went off at once up the staircase to bed, not looking back at her.

“I’ve kept some supper for you, dear.”

“Don’t want any supper.”

“But, dearie------”

“Good night, mother,” and I went up and slammed my door upon her, blew out my candle, and lay down at once upon my bed, lay there a long time before I got up to undress.

There were times when that dumb beseeching of my mother’s face irritated me unspeakably.  It did so that night.  I felt I had to struggle against it, that I could not exist if I gave way to its pleadings, and it hurt me and divided me to resist it, almost beyond endurance.  It was clear to me that I had to think out for myself religious problems, social problems, questions of conduct, questions of expediency, that her poor dear simple beliefs could not help me at all—­and she did not understand!  Hers was the accepted religion, her only social ideas were blind submissions to the accepted order—­to laws, to doctors, to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all respectable persons in authority over us, and with her to believe was to fear.  She knew from a thousand little signs—­though still at times I went to church with her—­that I was passing out of touch of all these things that ruled her life, into some terrible unknown.  From things I said she could infer such clumsy concealments as I made.  She felt my socialism, felt my spirit in revolt against the accepted order, felt the impotent