tion the length of time the man had been shut up there
for his unrecorded and forgotten offense; but this old
wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there
among her married sons and daughters trying to realize
a father who had been to her a name, a thought, a
formless image, a tradition, all her life, and now was
suddenly concreted into actual flesh and blood and set
before her face.

It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that ac-
count that I have made room for it here, but on
account of a thing which seemed to me still more
curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought
from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage
against these oppressors. They had been heritors and