Mr. Opp

								

illustrious predecessor struck; "you take the money that's in the bank,
and leave me the house and Kippy. That'll be her share and mine. I can
take care of her; I don't ask favors of nobody. Suppose I do lose my
job; I'll get me another. There's a dozen ways I can make a living.
There ain't a man in the State that's got more resources than me. I got
plans laid now that'll revolutionize--"
"Yes," said Ben, quietly, "you always could do great things."
D. Webster's egotism, inflated to the utmost, burst at this prick, and
he suddenly collapsed. Dropping limply into the chair by the table, he
held his hand over his mouth to hide his agitation.
"There's--there's one thing," he began, swallowing violently, and
winking after each word, "that I--I can't do--and that's to leave
a--sister--to die--among strangers."
And then, to his mortification, his head went unexpectedly down upon his
arms, and a flood of tears bedimmed the radiance of his twenty-five-cent
four-in-hand.
From far down the river came the whistle of the boat, and, in the room
below, Jimmy Fallows removed a reluctant ear from the stove-pipe hole.
"Melindy," he said confidentially, entirely forgetting the late frost,
"I never see anybody in the world that stood as good a show of gittin'
the fool prize as that there D. Opp."

IV

The old Opp House stood high on the river-bank and gazed lonesomely out
into the summer night. It was a shabby, down-at-heel, dejected-looking
place, with one side showing faint lights, above and below, but the
other side so nailed up and empty and useless that it gave the place the
appearance of being paralyzed down one side and of having scarcely
enough vitality left to sustain life in the other.
To make matters worse, an old hound howled dismally on the door-step,
only stopping occasionally to paw at the iron latch and to whimper for
the master whose unsteady footsteps he had followed for thirteen years.
In the front room a shaded lamp, turned low, threw a circle of light on
the table and floor, leaving the corners full of vague, uncertain
shadows. From the wide, black fireplace a pair of rusty and battered
andirons held out empty arms, and on the high stone shelf above the
opening, flanked on each side by a stuffed owl, was a tall, square-faced
clock, with the hour-hand missing. The minute-hand still went on its
useless round, and behind it, on the face of the clock, a tiny schooner
with all sail set rocked with the swinging of the pendulum.
The loud ticking of the clock, and the lamentations of the hound
without, were not the only sounds that disturbed the night. Before the
empty fireplace, in a high-backed, cane-bottomed chair, slept an old
negress, with head bowed, moaning and muttering as she slept. She was
bent and ashen with age, and her brown skin sagged in long wrinkles from
her face and hands. On her forehead, reaching from brow to faded turban,
was a hideous testimony to some ancient conflict. A large, irregular