wept in passion.  His father was in a miserable, uneasy frame of mind.  He ceased his work, bared his brow to the delicious morning air.  He leaned upon his hoe, and gazed upon his child.  He felt there was something wrong.  He always knew, and acknowledged, that he was of a rash, irritable disposition.  He now remembered that ever since his child’s birth he had been exceedingly impatient with it.  He remembered how harshly he had spoken to it, how rudely he had tossed it on his knee when it awoke him with its crying at night.  He remembered that the little one had been daily with him for now three years, and that not a day had passed in which he had not spoken loudly, fiercely to the child.

Yes, he remembered the heavy blows he had given it in bursts of passion, blows deeply regretted the instant after, yet repeated on the first temptation.  He thought of it all; that his boy was but a little child, and that he had spoken to it, and expected from it, as if it were grown.  All his passionate, cruel words and blows rushed upon his memory; his rough replies to childish questions; his unmanly anger at childish offences.  He thought, too, how the little boy had still followed him, because its father was all on earth to him; how the little thing had said, he “was sorry,” and had offered a kiss even after some bitter word or blow altogether undeserved.  Leland remembered, too, as the morning air blew aside his hair, how often he had shown the same miserable, nervous irritability to his dog, his horse, his servants; even the branch of the tree that struck him as he walked; yea, even to his own wife.  He remembered how the same black, unhappy feelings had clouded his brow, had burst from his lips at every little domestic annoyance that had happened.  He could not but remember how it had only made matters worse—­had made himself and his family wretched for the time.  He felt how undignified, how unmanly all this was.  He pictured himself before his own eyes as a peevish, uneasy, irritable, unhappy man—­so weak-minded!

He glanced at the house; he knew his wife was in it, engaged in her morning duties; gentle, lady-like, loving him so dearly.  He glanced at his sobbing child, and saw how healthful and intelligent he was.  He glanced over his garden, and orchard, and lawn, and saw how pleasant was his home.  He thought of his circle of friends, his position in business, his own education and health.  He saw how much he had to make him happy; and all jarred and marred, and cursed by his miserable fits of irritation; the fever, the plague increasing daily; becoming his nature, breathing the pestilent atmosphere of hell over himself and all connected with him.

As he thus thought, his little boy again forgot himself, and strayed with heedless feet toward bis father.  Leland dropped his hoe, reached toward his child.  The little fellow threw up his hands, and writhed his body as if expecting a blow.

“Willie,” said the father, in a low, gentle voice.  Willie looked up with half fright, half amazement.  “Willie, boy,” said the father in a new tone, which had never passed his lips before, and he felt the deep, calm power of his own words.  “Willie, boy, don’t walk on pa’s plants.  Go back, and stay there till pa is done.”