“Sit down,” he said, pointing to a chair.
The room was an uncomfortable office, with no fire.
He himself took a seat deliberately at a desk, whence
he could watch Ida, and began to read. As he
did so, his face remained unmoved, but he looked away
occasionally, as if to reflect.
“What’s your name?” he asked, when
he had finished, beginning, at the same time, to tear
the letter into very small pieces, which he threw
into a waste-paper basket.
“Ida, sir,—Ida Starr.”
“Starr, eh?” He looked at her very keenly,
and, still looking, and still tearing up the letter,
went on in a hard, unmodulated voice. “Well,
Ida Starr, it seems your mother wants to put you in
the way of earning your living.” The child
looked up in fear and astonishment. “You
can carry a message? You’ll say to your
mother that I’ll undertake to do what I can
for you, on one condition, and that is that she puts
you in my hands and never sees you again.”
“Oh, I can’t leave mother!” burst
from the child’s lips involuntarily, her horror
overcoming her fear of the speaker.
“I didn’t ask you if you could,”
remarked Mr. Woodstock, with something like a sneer,
tapping the desk with the fingers of his right hand.
“I asked whether you could carry a message.
Can you, or not?”
“Yes, I can,” stammered Ida.
“Then take that message, and tell your
mother it’s all I’ve got to say.
Run away.”
He rose and stood with his hands behind him, watching
her. Ida made what haste she could to the door,
and sped out into the street.
ANTECEDENTS
It would not have been easy to find another instance
of a union of keen intellect and cold heart so singular
as that displayed in the character of Abraham Woodstock.
The man s life had been strongly consistent from the
beginning; from boyhood a powerful will had borne
him triumphantly over every difficulty, and in each
decisive instance his will had been directed by a
shrewd intelligence which knew at once the strength
of its own resources and the multiplied weaknesses
of the vast majority of men. In the pursuit of
his ends he would tolerate no obstacle which his strength
would suffice to remove. In boyhood and early
manhood the exuberance of his physical power was wont
to manifest itself in brutal self-assertion. At
school he was the worst kind of bully, his ferociousness
tempered by no cowardice. Later on, he learned
that a too demonstrative bearing would on many occasions
interfere with his success in life; he toned down
his love of muscular victory, and only allowed himself
an outbreak every now and then, when he felt he could
afford the indulgence. Put early into an accountant’s
office, and losing his father about the same time
(the parent, who had a diseased heart, was killed
by an outburst of fury to which Abraham gave way on
some trivial occasion), he had henceforth to fight
