and Joseph's mouth became a slit of pain in his stark face. He must have money. It was the only protection, the only God, the only fortress, a man had in this world. Before this, Joseph had believed that very soon he would find a way to earn a comfortable wage and give his brother and sister a home and shelter and warm fires and good food and clothing. After all, there still lingered in him the belief that this was a land of opportunity, and he knew there were rich men in Winfield even if they did conceal their riches. Now he no longer cared how he would obtain, not a comfortable wage, but money in profusion. It was a matter from this night on of discovering the secret, and he would find it. He would surely find it. He thought of Mr. Tom Hennessey, the Irishman who had made his fortune, it was said with truth and knowledge, in blackbirding, and so had his father before him, and he had many interests in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and all of them, it was hinted, equally nefarious. It was his money which had made him mayor of this town, and which had given him a luxurious home in Green Hills, he the son of an Irish immigrant like Joseph Armagh, himself. The townsmen spoke in awe of him, while they sneered at his origins-but with a sort of indulgent fawning. Even an Irishman with money was to be respected and honored, and caps lifted at his passing. What was it his lady had said? They would be going to another city, far away. Joseph could not afford the penny for a newspaper but he had heard the men at the sawmill discussing that "Papist" who had just been appointed by the State Legislature as one of the two senators to go to Washington. They pretended to despise him, but they were proud that a senator-something like a member of the House of Lords, Joseph had thought-would be from their town and so add polish and pride to it. Besides, he had been born here, and he had been a less venal mayor than most, and had often expressed his "fraternal interest" in the poor workingman "and the conditions of his work." The fact that he had done nothing to help either was not held against him, and in spite of the general loathing and fear of "Popery" Tom Hennessey was not suspected of secret unspeakable crimes except the ones less appalling, which were at least understandable and even to be admired as "cuteness," and obsequiously envied. To deal in flesh and blood, even if it were "black," had always seemed to Joseph to be the vilest and most unpardonable of crimes. Oppressed, himself, from birth, his rare cold sympathies had been with the fleeing slaves, who could now be captured and returned to their owners in the South. There had been times when he had sickened over the thought, and had hoped that at some near time he would be able to help a desperate slave to reach Canada, and safety from the viciousness which was universal man. But tonight he envied Tom Hennessey whose fortune, and his father's, had begun in blackbirding. The mayor was far cleverer than Joseph Armagh, and his father certainly more intelligent than Daniel Armagh, who would have been stunned to learn that in the world there lived men so detestable and degraded. "An honorable man, lifted above sin and meanness, who had never raised his hand against the helpless but had given them all he could, was greater in the sight of God and man than a lord of Norman blood, and the Royal Family, itself," Daniel had said once, long ago. Joseph had not really believed that nonsense. But it was Daniel Armagh, thought Joseph on this ashen and raining night, who had innocently betrayed his family with his silliness of thought and word and deed and had never told them the truth. In these tormented minutes Joseph felt his first hatred for his father-and was not ashamed and was not aghast. He crossed the mean town square with its slipper)' cobbles and its black storefronts. A statue of William Penn, badly executed in bronze, stood in the center, the latrine of birds. No one was
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