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THE spring was early that year. It was only the last of March, but the trees were filmed with green and paling with promise of bloom; the front yards were showing new grass pricking through the old. It was high time to plow the south field and the garden, but Christopher sat in his rocking-chair beside the kitchen window and gazed out, and did absolutely nothing about it.

Myrtle Dodd, Christopher’s wife, washed the breakfast dishes, and later kneaded the bread, all the time glancing furtively at her husband. She had a most old-fashioned deference with regard to Christopher. She was always a little afraid of him. Sometimes Christopher’s mother, Mrs. Cyrus Dodd, and his sister Abby, who had never married, reproached her for this attitude of mind. “You are entirely too much cowed down by Christopher,” Mrs. Dodd said.

“I would never be under the thumb of any man,” Abby said.

“Have you ever seen Christopher in one of his spells?” Myrtle would ask.

Then Mrs. Cyrus Dodd and Abby would look at each other. “It is all your fault, mother,” Abby would say. “You really ought not to have allowed your son to have his own head so much.”

“You know perfectly well, Abby, what I had to contend against,” replied Mrs. Dodd, and Abby became speechless. Cyrus Dodd, now deceased some twenty years, had never during his whole life yielded to anything but birth and death. Before those two primary facts even his terrible will was powerless. He had come into the world without his consent being obtained; he had passed in like manner from it. But during his life he had ruled, a petty monarch, but a most thorough one. He had spoiled Christopher, and his wife, although a woman of high spirit, knew of no appealing.

“I could never go against your father, you know that,” said Mrs. Dodd, following up her advantage.

“Then,” said Abby, “you ought to have warned poor Myrtle. It was a shame to let her marry a man as spoiled as Christopher.”

“I would have married him, anyway,” declared Myrtle with sudden defiance; and her mother-inlaw regarded her approvingly.

“There are worse men than Christopher, and Myrtle knows it,” said she.

“Yes, I do, mother,” agreed Myrtle. “Christopher hasn’t one bad habit.”

“I don’t know what you call a bad habit,” retorted Abby. “I call having your own way in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil rather a bad habit. Christopher tramples on everything in his path, and he always has. He tramples on poor Myrtle.”

At that Myrtle laughed. “I don’t think I look trampled on,” said she; and she certainly did not. Pink and white and plump was Myrtle, although she had, to a discerning eye, an expression which denoted extreme nervousness.

This morning of spring, when her husband sat doing nothing, she wore this nervous expression. Her blue eyes looked dark and keen; her forehead was wrinkled; her rosy mouth was set. Myrtle and Christopher were not young people; they were a little past middle age, still far from old in look or ability.

Myrtle had kneaded the bread to rise for the last time before it was put into the oven, and had put on the meat to boil for dinner, before she dared address that silent figure which had about it something tragic. Then she spoke in a small voice. “Christopher,” said she.

Christopher made no reply.

“It is a good morning to plow, ain’t it?” said Myrtle.

Christopher was silent.

“Jim Mason got over real early; I suppose he thought you’d want to get at the south field. He’s been sitting there at the barn door for ‘most two hours.”

Then Christopher rose. Myrtle’s anxious face lightened. But to her wonder her husband went into the front entry and got his best hat. “He ain’t going to wear his best hat to plow,” thought Myrtle. For an awful moment it occurred to her that something had suddenly gone wrong with her husband’s mind. Christopher brushed the hat carefully, adjusted it at the little looking-glass in the kitchen, and went out.