“Shucks!” said the fat man, as soon as he could.

“What are you givin’ us?  That the’s a Yankee boa’din’ house.”

“And I suppose that that is part of your business, too,” said Stephen, acidly.

The fat man looked at him, pressed his lips, wrote down the number, shaken all the while with a disturbance which promised to lead to another explosion.  Finally, after a deal of pantomime, and whispering and laughter with the notary behind the wire screen, the deed was made out, signed, attested, and delivered.  Stephen counted out the money grimly, in gold and Boston drafts.

Out in the sunlight on Chestnut Street, with the girl by his side, it all seemed a nightmare.  The son of Appleton Brice of Boston the owner of a beautiful quadroon girl!  And he had bought hex with his last cent.

Miss Crane herself opened the door in answer to his ring.  Her keen eyes instantly darted over his shoulder and dilated, But Stephen, summoning all his courage, pushed past her to the stairs, and beckoned Hester to follow.

“I have brought this—­this person to see my mother,” he said

The spinster bowed from the back of her neck.  She stood transfixed on a great rose in the hall carpet until she heard Mrs. Brice’s door open and slam, and then she strode up the stairs and into the apartment of Mrs. Abner Reed.  As she passed the first landing, the quadroon girl was waiting in the hall.

CHAPTER VI

SILAS WHIPPLE

The trouble with many narratives is that they tell too much.  Stephen’s interview with his mother was a quiet affair, and not historic.  Miss Crane’s boarding-house is not an interesting place, and the tempest in that teapot is better imagined than described.  Out of consideration for Mr. Stephen Brice, we shall skip likewise a most affecting scene at Mr. Canter’s second-hand furniture store.

That afternoon Stephen came again to the dirty flight of steps which led to Judge Whipple’s office.  He paused a moment to gather courage, and then, gripping the rail, he ascended.  The ascent required courage now, certainly.  He halted again before the door at the top.  But even as he stood there came to him, in low, rich tones, the notes of a German song.  He entered And Mr. Richter rose in shirt-sleeves from his desk to greet him, all smiling.

“Ach, my friend!” said he, “but you are late.  The Judge has been awaiting you.”

“Has he?” inquired Stephen, with ill-concealed anxiety.

The big young German patted him on the shoulder.

Suddenly a voice roared from out the open transom of the private office, like a cyclone through a gap.

“Mr. Richter!”

“Sir!”

“Who is that?”

“Mr. Brice, sir.”

“Then why in thunder doesn’t he come in?”

Mr. Richter opened the private door, and in Stephen walked.  The door closed again, and there he was in the dragon’s dens face to face with the dragon, who was staring him through and through.  The first objects that caught Stephen’s attention were the grizzly gray eye brows, which seemed as so much brush to mark the fire of the deep-set battery of the eyes.  And that battery, when in action, must have been truly terrible.