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“And how can I thank you, sir, and madam,” turning to Mrs. Griffin, “for the bounteous gift—-“

“Gift?” exclaimed both in a breath; “what gift? Where is the turkey you brought? What gift? What gift?”

“Why, a splendid turkey, with your card kindly—-“

This was received by the company with a volley of cries and calls, by a relapse on the part of Mrs. Griffin, and by the descent of Mr. Griffin’s hand upon David’s coat-collar, and finally by poor, frightened David’s ejectment from the kitchen-door, harshly reproached by his employer as a thief and vagabond, and warned never to show his face in his store again.

“Be off, now!” he cried after him, “you ungrateful, deceitful old villain!” and then he slammed the door, and joined the hungry guests, to whom he declaimed at some length on the thanklessness of the lower classes.

Mrs. Griffin was quickly re-restored, this time to a state of injured perfection, and after the united apologies of herself and husband, and more abuse of poor, luckless David Dubbs, the company concluded with pretty bad grace to make the most of what had been prepared in the way of vegetables and side dishes, long ago cold. Mr. Griffin was mad, insulted, and hungry, and the contents of the letter he had received seemed to add very little warmth to the food, but a great deal to his anger, for he tore it up into very small pieces, as if it were David himself he was torturing, and, with a look the company did not consider very sociable, scattered it on the floor.

V.

The sky, as if presaging David Dubbs’s misfortune, had grown overcast, and flung down spiteful little sallies of snow as he crossed the river on his way to Mr. Griffin’s. The creaking of the bridge’s huge timbers and the splitting ice below it made him shiver and pull his threadbare coat close about him and sacrifice his old hands to the wind to save his freezing ears. The same scarf bound them as the night before, but an icy gale like that which swept from the open river would have frozen through arctic furs. Notwithstanding all this, his spirits were lighter than usual. The scene he had left at home floated on before his eyes, and transfused itself with the black, sketchy trees against the sky and blent with the ragged barbs of smoke that depended from cottage chimneys. The wind had been boisterous enough, and would have torn it away on a cantering jaunt not many minutes ago, but, surcharged as it was now with blinding snow, it had its own liberty to look after, and paid little heed to anything else.

The snow came on thicker and thicker, and had begun to whiten the streets by the time David reached Mr. Griffin’s house, and now, as he stood shocked and bewildered in the garden again, it lay deep and dreadfully silent as far as the eye could reach. Had he heard truly? Had he, for the first time in a long, and honest, and reputable life, been called a thief? And by the man whom his heart had overflowed in gratitude to but a moment before! David Dubbs a thief! And what of? What had he stolen? Oh, it was cruel to his poor old heart! “And the girls so merry, even now,” he thought. How; how could he go to them with these bitter tidings? To be deprived of even the poor means his pen had faithfully and honestly earned for them; to toil so long, so wearily for the meed of a thief, for the name of a thief! and he wept in his utter woe.

His hat was still on his head, his coat was undone, his scarf had fallen back on his shoulders; his poor old eyes were wide apart again, now, and the wind tugged at his scanty hair, and the snow, no whiter than itself, sifted through it and drifted into the folds of his clothes. But, stunned, and tortured, and despairing though he was, the old clerk staggered on insensibly homeward. Back through the dreary trees; back through the drifted streets; back to the bridge, where he stopped by some fatal impulse and leaned near a bleak abutment that overlooked the river–gazing, gazing, gazing in a blank stare at the driving channel below. The thought, the lurking purpose was shadowed dimly on his distraught mind. The cold, rolling river once passed, the seething cakes of ice once passed, and it would soon be over, soon be over. Life had been a worthless gift to him. His youth had been falsely colored by the visions of childhood; his age had been falsely colored by the ambitions of youth. Nothing he had looked to in the distance ever had grown into reality. Why should he survive his good name! And he clutched the stones and raised himself up and quivered at the top of the stone wall.