The years that stole silently over the heads of the old man and the young child in Welch’s Court brought a period of wild prosperity to Stillwater.  The breath of war blew the forges to a white heat, and the baffling problem of the mediaeval alchemists was solved.  The baser metals were transmuted into gold.  A disastrous, prosperous time, with the air rent periodically by the cries of newsboys as battles were fought, and by the roll of the drum in the busy streets as fresh recruits were wanted.  Glory and death to the Southward, and at the North pale women in black.

All which interested Dick mighty little.  After he had learned to read at the district school, he escaped into another world.  Two lights were now generally seen burning of a night in the Shackford house:  one on the ground-floor where Mr. Shackford sat mouthing his contracts and mortgages, and weaving his webs like a great, lean, gray spider; and the other in the north gable, where Dick hung over a tattered copy of Robinson Crusoe by the flicker of the candle-ends which he had captured during the day.

Little Dick was little Dick no more:  a tall, heavily built blond boy, with a quiet, sweet disposition, that at first offered temptations to the despots of the playground; but a sudden flaring up once or twice of that unexpected spirit which had broken out in his babyhood brought him immunity from serious persecution.

The boy’s home life at this time would have seemed pathetic to an observer,—­the more pathetic, perhaps, in that Dick himself was not aware of its exceptional barrenness.  The holidays that bring new brightness to the eyes of happier children were to him simply days when he did not go to school, and was expected to provide an extra quantity of kindling wood.  He was housed, and fed, and clothed, after a fashion, but not loved.  Mr. Shackford did not ill-treat the lad, in the sense of beating him; he merely neglected him.  Every year the man became more absorbed in his law cases and his money, which accumulated magically.  He dwelt in a cloud of calculations.  Though all his interests attached him to the material world, his dry, attenuated body seemed scarcely a part of it.

“Shackford, what are you going to do with that scapegrace of yours?”

It was Mr. Leonard Tappleton who ventured the question.  Few persons dared to interrogate Mr. Shackford on his private affairs.

“I am going to make a lawyer of him,” said Mr. Shackford, crackling his finger-joints like stiff parchment.

“You couldn’t do better.  You ought to have an attorney in the family.”

“Just so,” assented Mr. Shackford, dryly.  “I could throw a bit of business in his way now and then,—­eh?”

“You could make his fortune, Shackford.  I don’t see but you might employ him all the time.  When he was not fighting the corporations, you might keep him at it suing you for his fees.”