Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/275

 that wharf of yours. She said it was your wharf, and like everything you did it was a failure. She said you never finished anything you started and never started anything you could put off. She said she was ambitious when she married you—a girl of good education—wanted to be a school-teacher. You were studying, then, at night, and she thought you were going to be another Abraham Lincoln. You were studying law. A little later you were reading medical books. Then you took to reading newspapers and talking politics. You studied everything but farming and did everything but attend to your work. She saw she'd never escape from poverty unless the boy pulled her out of it. And she kept him at school, and slaved for him and pushed him along, and let you do as you liked.... Well?"

Matt looked up, with the gaze of a man whose thoughts are turned inward upon himself and his past.

The brother clenched his hand. "That boy tripped on your wharf and shot himself! On your wharf—the wharf you were too lazy to finish. He tripped on one of the stakes you were too lazy to even off—and killed himself! Those people told me about it when I saw them in town. They told me your wife was as good as crazy—that she went around like a madwoman, stone dumb—that she never even shed a tear—that you'd killed the boy and worse than killed her. They found out that