In the little house at the end of the street by the shores of Squirrel
Creek, Sam and his sister Kate regarded their father's warlike pretensions
with scorn. "The butter is low, father's army leg will ache to-night,"
they whispered to each other across the kitchen table.
Following her mother's example, Kate, a tall slender girl of sixteen and
already a bread winner with a clerkship in Winney's drygoods store,
remained silent under Windy's boasting, but Sam, striving to emulate them,
did not always succeed. There was now and then a rebellious muttering that
should have warned Windy. It had once burst into an open quarrel in which
the victor of a hundred battles withdrew defeated from the field. Windy,
half-drunk, had taken an old account book from a shelf in the kitchen, a
relic of his days as a prosperous merchant when he had first come to
Caxton, and had begun reading to the little family a list of names of men
who, he claimed, had been the cause of his ruin.
"There is Tom Newman, now," he exclaimed excitedly. "Owns a hundred acres
of good corn-growing land and won't pay for the harness on the backs of
his horses or for the ploughs in his barn. The receipt he has from me is
forged.
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