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Chapter 1—A Perspective on Human Genetics

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. The major point of controversy in deCODE's plan to establish a genetic database of the people of
Iceland is
A. the large expense and minimal projected benefits.
B. the privacy and appropriate use of the information obtained.
C. the inadequacy of the database size.
D. the genetic isolation of Icelanders.
E. all of these.
ANS: B PTS: 1

2. What was deCODE’s stated purpose in wanting to decode the genomes of Icelanders?
A. To trace migration patterns from Europe.
B. To find unique genes to patent.
C. To identify disease-causing genes for the purpose of drug development.
D. To learn more about the interaction of genes and proteins.
E. More than one of these is the answer.
ANS: C PTS: 1

3. What was a major issue in deCODE’s genomic studies of Icelanders that ultimately led to it filing for
bankruptcy?
A. Too many Icelanders were reluctant to cooperate with deCODE.
B. deCODE did not have the money to invest in the high-tech equipment needed.
C. Most diseases are are caused by multiple gene mutations and are therefore too complex for
deCODE’s purposes.
D. There was too much criticism from bioethicists, especially from the United Nations.
E. Several top executives at deCODE were charged with embezzlement.
ANS: C PTS: 1

4. Genetics is defined as the study of ____.

A. diseases
B. DNA
C. heredity
D. chromosome structure
E. more than one of these
ANS: C PTS: 1

5. Which is the correct arrangement of the components of a nucleotide in a strand of DNA?

A. Bases pair up inside with phosphates and sugars on the outside.
B. Phosphates and sugars pair up on the inside with bases pointing to the outside.
C. Phosphates, sugars, and bases alternate in a single linear molecule like beads on a string.
 D. Bases connect with sugars on the inside and phosphate groups are on the outside.
E. Phosphates connect on the inside while sugars and bases connect to each other on the
outside.
ANS: A PTS: 1

6. Which of the following is NOT a nucleotide base found in DNA?

A. Adenine
B. Thymine
C. Guanine
D. Cytosine
E. Uracil
ANS: E PTS: 1

7. Gregor Mendel ____.

A. cross-bred pea plants with contrasting traits
B. claimed that each individual carries a pair of "factors" for a given trait
C. discovered that genes are on chromosomes
D. did all of these things
E. did most, but not all of these things
ANS: E PTS: 1

8. Mendel's work on the transmission of genes in pea plants is applicable to ____.

A. only pea plants
B. plants and some animals but not humans
C. all plants, but only plants
D. all plants and animals, including humans
E. all organisms
ANS: D PTS: 1

9. What Mendel called “factors” we now call ____ .

A. nucleotides
B. DNA
C. chromosomes
D. genes
E. bases
ANS: D PTS: 1

10. Before Mendel, most people would have predicted that a cross of a red rose with a yellow rose would
produce ____.
A. all red roses
B. all yellow roses
C. all orange roses
D. about half yellow roses and half red roses
E. about three-fourths red roses and one-fourth yellow roses
ANS: C PTS: 1

11. The main purpose of preparing karyotypes is ____.

A. to reveal chromosome abnormalities
B. to determine gender
C. to determine which genes are on which chromosomes
 D. to isolate and analyze genes
E. all of these
ANS: A PTS: 1

12. The branch of genetics concerned with the mechanisms by which genes are transferred from parent to
offspring is called ____ .
A. transmission genetics D. molecular genetics
B. pedigree analysis E. recombinant DNA technology
C. cytogenetics
ANS: A PTS: 1

13. If you were a geneticist working to clone a woolly mammoth, you would be using ____ technology.
A. cytogenetic D. transmission genetics
B. pedigree analysis E. recombinant DNA
C. molecular genetics
ANS: E PTS: 1

14. Which one of the following statements about eugenics is UNTRUE?

A. It was founded by Charles Darwin.
B. It is a dubious method for improving the human species through selective breeding.
C. It is based on the assumption that human traits are much less influenced by environment
than genes.
D. It contributed to the Immigration Act of 1924.
E. It was used to justify the passage of sterilization laws.
ANS: A PTS: 1

15. Which of the following was a result of the eugenics movement in the United States?
A. Individuals thought to be unfit were sterilized.
B. Immigration from Itally was curtailed.
C. Individuals with desirable traits were encouraged to have large families.
D. Contests were held to determine the most fit families.
E. All of these were a result of the eugenics movement in the United States.
ANS: E PTS: 1

16. What was Carrie Buck’s significance in the history of genetics?

A. She was a famous advocate for eugenics.
B. She became the first woman geneticist.
C. She was sterilized after the US Supreme Court determined she was feebleminded.
D. She discovered how to genetically modify corn to be resistant to herbicides.
E. She is the author of the first biography of Gregor Mendel.
ANS: C PTS: 1

17. Hereditarianism is the idea that human traits are ____.

A. partly influenced by environment and genes
B. influenced mostly by the genetic make-up
C. influenced equally by genes and environment
D. determined solely by the genotype or genetic make-up
E. none of these
ANS: D PTS: 1
18. The decline of the eugenics movement in the U.S. in the early 20th century resulted from ____.
A. its misuse for social and political purposes by the Nazis
B. the lack of knowledge of the cell theory
C. the lack of understanding of natural selection
D. the idea that most human traits are controlled by single genes
E. all of these
ANS: A PTS: 1

19. DNA microarrays (DNA chips) are used to ____.

A. cut DNA molecules at specific sites
B. clone DNA
C. test an individual for a specific genetic disease
D. screen an individual's entire genome
E. produce human embryos in a laboratory dish
ANS: D PTS: 1

20. Induced pluripotency is a term related to ___ .

A. producing stem cells from normal body cells
B. cloning animals like Dolly the sheep
C. the discovery of mutated genes that cause disease
D. the decoding of the human genome
E. the practice of eugenics
ANS: A PTS: 1

21. Which of the following terms is not closely related to the others?
A. Haplotype
B. Single nucleotide polymorphism
C. Genome-wide association study
D. Induced pluripotency
E. All of these terms are closely related
ANS: D PTS: 1

22. Gene therapy can best be described as ____.

A. the elimination of a defect (mutation) in a gene
B. the insertion of normal genes to act in place of mutant genes
C. the insertion of human genes into other organisms
D. the cloning of genes to produce and purify therapeutically useful proteins
E. the mapping of all human genetic information
ANS: B PTS: 1

23. One of the properties of genes is that they can "recombine." This refers to their ability to ____.
A. be transmitted from parents to children
B. move from one chromosome to another
C. be turned on and off
D. undergo changes
E. break into pieces and then reassemble
ANS: B PTS: 1

24. Which one of the following is the most accurate description of the pedigrees used in human genetics?
 A. Family tree charts showing who has/had a particular trait.
B. Certificates verifying that an individual has a particular trait.
C. Certificates of good genetic health.
D. Family tree charts showing everyone's birth and death dates.
E. Family tree charts showing photographs of all individuals.
ANS: A PTS: 1

SHORT ANSWER

1. Should information about citizens' genomes be held by a single private company? By the government?
By anyone?

ANS:
Answer not provided.

PTS: 1

2. Distinguish between transmission genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, and population genetics.
Which has had the greatest impact on human genetics in recent years?

ANS:
Answer not provided.

PTS: 1

3. Distinguish between basic and applied research and discuss how the two are linked in terms of
genetics.

ANS:
Answer not provided.

PTS: 1

4. Discuss the contribution made by Francis Galton to the development of eugenics.

ANS:
Answer not provided.

PTS: 1

5. What were the benefits envisioned from the Human Genome Project and was this project an
appropriate use of taxpayers' money?

ANS:
Answer not provided.

PTS: 1

6. What are the reasons why Iceland was chosen to have its population’s genome decoded?

ANS:
Answer not provided.
 PTS: 1

7. Explain the connection between single nucleotide polymorphism, haplotype, and genome-wide
association studies.

ANS:
Answer not provided.

PTS: 1
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 “Yes, he was deucedly offensive. I daresay it will come to an open
row. I haven’t seen him yet to-day, but things looked very dickey
indeed for the partnership last night.”
“Then the firm hasn’t got any specified term to run?”
“No, it is terminable at pleasure of both parties, which of course
means either party.”
“Well, there, you can tell him to go to the old Harry, if you like.”
“Precisely what I mean to do—if—”
“If what?”
“If there is going to be enough in this Minster business to keep me
going in the mean while. I don’t think I could take much of his
regular office business away. I haven’t been there long enough, you
know.”
“Enough? I Should think there would be enough! You will have five
thousand dollars as her representative in the Thessaly Manufacturing
Company. I daresay you might charge something for acting as her
agent in the pig-iron trust, too, though I’d draw it pretty mild if I
were you. Women get scared at bills for that sort of thing. A young
fellow like you ought to save money on half of five thousand dollars.
It never cost me fifteen hundred dollars yet to live, and live well,
too.”
Horace smiled in turn, and the smile was felt by both to suffice,
without words. There was no need to express in terms the fact that
in matters of necessary expense a Boyce and a Tenney, were two
widely differentiated persons. Only perhaps. Horace had more
satisfaction out of the thought than did his companion.
“Oh, by the way,” he added, “I ought to tell you, Tracy knows in
some way that you are mixed up with me in the thing. He mentioned
your name—in that slow, ox-like way of his so that I couldn’t tell
how much he knew or suspected.”
 Mr. Tenney was interested in this; and showed his concern by
separating the letters on his desk into little piles, as if he were
preparing to perform a card tricks:
“I guess it won’t matter, much,” he said at last. “Everybody’s going
to know it pretty soon, now.” He thought again for a little, and then
added: “Only, on second thought, you’d better stick in with him a
while longer, if you can. Make some sort of apology to him, if he
needs one, and keep in the firm. It will be better so.”
“Why should I, pray?” demanded the young man, curtly.
Mr. Tenney again looked momentarily as if he were tempted to
reply with acerbity, and again the look vanished as swiftly as it
came. He answered in all mildness:
“Because I don’t want Tracy to be sniffing around, inquiring into
things, until we are fairly in the saddle. He might spoil everything.”
“But how will my remaining with him prevent that?”
“You don’t know your man,” replied Tenney. “He’s one of those
fellows who would feel in honor bound to keep his hands off, simply
because you were with him. That’s the beauty of that kind of chap.”
This tribute to the moral value of his partner impressed Horace
but faintly. “Well, I’ll see how he talks to-day,” he said, doubtfully.
“Perhaps we can manage to hit it off together a while longer.” Then
a thought crossed his mind, and he asked with abruptness:
“What are you afraid of his finding out, if he does ‘sniff around’ as
you call it? What is there to find out? Everything is above board, isn’t
it?”
“Why, you know it is. Who should know it better than you?” Mr.
Tenney responded.
Horace reasoned to himself as he walked away that there really
was no cause for apprehension. Tenney was smart, and evidently
Wendover was smart too, but if they tried to pull the wool over his
eyes they would find that he himself had not been born yesterday.
He had done everything they had suggested to him, but he felt that
the independent and even captious manner in which he had done it
all must have shown the schemers that he was not a man to be
trifled with. Thus far he could see no dishonesty in their plans. He
had been very nervous about the first steps, but his mind was
almost easy now. He was in a position where he could protect the
Minsters if any harm threatened them. And very soon now, he said
confidently to himself, he would be in an even more enviable
position—that of a member of the family council, a prospective son-
in-law. It was clear to his perceptions that Kate liked him, and that
he had no rivals.
It happened that Reuben did not refer again to the subject of
yesterday’s dispute, and while Horace acquiesced in the silence, he
was conscious of some disappointment over it. It annoyed him to
even look at his partner this morning, and he was sick and tired of
the partnership. It required an effort to be passing civil with Reuben,
and he said to himself a hundred times during the day that he
should be heartily glad when the Thessaly Manufacturing Company
got its new machinery in, and began real operations, so that he
could take up his position there as the visible agent of the millions,
and pitch his partner and the pettifogging law business overboard
altogether.
In the course of the afternoon he went to the residence of the
Minsters. The day was not Tuesday, but Horace regarded himself as
emancipated from formal conditions, and at the door asked for the
ladies, and then made his own way into the drawing-room, with
entire self-possession.
When Mrs. Minster came down, he had some trivial matter of
business ready as a pretext for his visit, but her manner was so
gracious that he felt pleasantly conscious of the futility of pretexts.
He was on such a footing in the Minster household that he would
never need excuses any more.
 The lady herself mentioned the plan of his attending the
forthcoming meeting of the directors of the pig-iron trust at
Pittsburg, and told him that she had instructed her bankers to
deposit with his bankers a lump sum for expenses chargeable
against the estate, which he could use at discretion. “You mustn’t be
asked to use your own money on our business,” she said, smilingly.
It is only natural to warm toward people who have such nice
things as this to say, and Horace found himself assuming a very
confidential, almost filial, attitude toward Mrs. Minster. Her kindness
to him was so marked that he felt really moved by it, and in a
gracefully indirect way said so. He managed this by alluding to his
own mother, who had died when he was a little boy, and then
dwelling, with a tender inflection in his voice, upon the painful
loneliness which young men feel who are brought up in motherless
homes. “It seems as if I had never known a home at all,” he said,
and sighed.
“She was one of the Beekmans from Tyre, wasn’t she? I’ve heard
Tabitha speak of her often,” said Mrs. Minster. The words were not
important, but the look which accompanied them was distinctly
sympathetic.
Perhaps it was this glance that affected Horace. He made a little
gulping sound in his throat, clinched his hands together, and looked
fixedly down upon the pattern of the carpet.
“We should both have been better men if she had lived’,” he
murmured, in a low voice.
As no answer came, he was forced to look up after a time, and
then upon the instant he realized that his pathos had been wasted,
for Mrs. Minster’s face did not betray the emotion he had
anticipated. She seemed to have been thinking of something else.
“Have you seen any Bermuda potatoes in the market yet?” she
asked. “It’s about time for them, isn’t it?”
 “I’ll ask my father,” Horace replied, determined not to be thrown
off the trail. “He has been in the West Indies a good deal, and he
knows all about their vegetables, and the seasons, and so on. It is
about him that I wish to speak, Mrs. Minster.”
The lady nodded her head, and drew down the comers of her
mouth a little.
“I feel the homeless condition of the General very much,” Horace
went on. “The death of my mother was a terrible blow to him, one
he has never recovered from.”
Mrs. Minster had heard differently, but she nodded her head again
in sympathy with this new view. Horace had not been mistaken in
believing that filial affection was good in her eyes.
“So he has lived all these years almost alone in the big house,” the
son proceeded, “and the solitary life has affected his spirits,
weakened his ambition, relaxed his regard for the part he ought to
play in the community. Since I have been back, he has brightened
up a good deal. He has been a most loving father to me always, and
I would do anything in the world to contribute to his happiness. It is
borne in upon me more and more that if I had a cheerful home to
which he could turn for warmth and sunshine, if I had a wife whom
he could reverence and be fond of, if there were grandchildren to
greet him when he came and to play upon his knee—he would feel
once more as if there was something in life worth living for.”
Horace awaited with deep anxiety the answer to this. The General
was the worst card in his hand, one which he was glad to be rid of
at any risk. If it should turn out that it had actually taken a trick in
the game, then he would indeed be lucky.
“If it is no offence, how old are you, Mr. Boyce?” the lady asked.
“I shall be twenty-eight in April.”
Mrs. Minster seemed to approve the figures. “I never have
believed in early marriages,” she said. “They make more than half
the trouble there is. The Mauverensens were never great hands for
marrying early. My grandfather, Major Douw, was almost thirty, and
my father was past that age. And, of course, people married then
much earlier than they do nowadays.”
“I hope you do not think twenty-eight too young,” Horace pleaded,
with alert eyes resting on her face. He paused only for an instant,
and then, just as the tremor arising in his heart had reached his
tongue, added earnestly, “For it is a Mauverensen I wish to marry.”
Mrs. Minster looked at him with no light of comprehension in her
glance. “It can’t be our people,” she said, composedly, “for Anthony
has no daughters. It must be some of the Schenectady lot. We’re
not related at all. They try to make out that they are, but they’re
not.”
“You are very closely and tenderly related to the young lady I have
learned to adore,” the young man said, leaning forward on his low
chair until one knee almost touched the carpet. “I called her a
Mauverensen because she is worthy of that historic blood, but it was
her mother’s, not her father’s name. Mrs. Minster, I love your
daughter Kate!”
“Goodness me!” was the astonished lady’s comment.
She stared at the young man in suppliant attitude before her, in
very considerable confusion of thought, and for what seemed to him
an intolerable time.
“I am afraid it wouldn’t do at all,” she said first, doubtingly. Then
she added, as if thinking aloud: “I might have known Kate was
keeping something from me. She hasn’t been herself at all these last
few weeks.”
“But she has not been keeping this from you, Mrs. Minster,” urged
the young man, in his softest voice. “It is my own secret—all my
own—kept locked in the inner tabernacle of my heart until this very
moment, when I revealed it to you.”
 “You mean that Kate—my daughter—does not know of this?”
“She must know that I worship the ground she treads on—she
would be blind not to realize that—but I have never said a word to
her about it. No, not a word!”
Mrs. Minster uttered the little monosyllable “oh!” with a hesitating,
long-drawn-out sound. It was evident that this revelation altered
matters in her mind, and Horace hurried on:
“No,” he said; “the relation between mother and child has always
seemed to pie the most sacred thing on earth—perhaps because my
own mother died so many, many years ago. I would rather stifle my
own feelings than let an act of mine desecrate or imperil that
relation. It may be that I am old-fashioned, Mrs. Minster,” the young
man continued, with a deprecatory smile, “but I like the old habit of
the good families—that of deferring to the parents. I say that to
them the chief courtesy and deference are due. I know it is out of
date, but I have always felt that way. So I speak to you first. I say to
you with profound respect that you have reared the loveliest and
best of all the daughters of the sons of men, and that if you will only
entertain the idea of permitting me to strive to win her love, I shall
be the proudest and happiest mortal on earth.”
Whatever might betide with the daughter, the conquest of the
mother was easy and complete.
“I like your sentiments very much indeed,” she said, with evident
sincerity. “And I like you too. I may as well tell you so. Of course I
haven’t the least idea what Kate will say.”
“Oh, leave that to me!” said Horace, with ardent confidence. Then,
after this rapturous outburst, he went on more quietly: “I would beg
of you not to mention the subject to her. I think that would be best.
Your favor has allowed me to come and go here on pleasant terms
of friendship. Let these terms not be altered. I will not ask your
daughter to commit herself until she has had time and chance to
know me through and through. It would not be fair to her otherwise.
To pick a husband is the one grand, irrevocable step in a young girl’s
life. Its success means bliss, content, sunshine; its failure means all
that is the reverse. Therefore, I say, she cannot have too much
information, too many advantages, to help her in her choice.”
Thus it came to be understood that Mrs. Minster was to say
nothing, and was not to seem to make more of Horace than she had
previously done.
Then he bowed over her hand and lightly kissed it, in a fashion
which the good lady fondly assumed to be European, and was gone.
Mrs. Minster spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in a
semi-dazed abstraction of mental power, from time to time fitfully
remembering some wealthy young man whom she had vaguely
considered as a possible son-in-law, and sighing impartially over
each mustached and shirt-fronted figure as she pushed it out into
the limbo of the might-have-been. She almost groaned once when
she recalled that this secret must be kept even from her friend
Tabitha.
As for Horace, he walked on air. The marvel of his great success
surrounded and lifted him, as angels bear the souls of the blessed
fleeting from earth in the artist’s dream. The young Bonaparte,
home from Italy and the reproduction of Hannibal’s storied feat, with
Paris on its knees before him and France resounding with his name,
could not have swung his shoulders more proudly, or gazed upon
unfolding destiny with a more exultant confidence.
On his way homeward an instinctive desire to be alone with his joy
led him to choose unfrequented streets, and on one of these he
passed a milliner’s shop which he had never seen before. He would
not have noted it now, save that his eye was unconsciously caught
by some stray freak of color in the window where bonnets were
displayed. Then, still unconsciously, his vision embraced the glass
door beside this window, and there suddenly it was arrested and
turned to a bewildered stare.
 In the dusk of the little shop nothing could be distinguished but
two figures which stood close by the door. The dying light from the
western sky, ruddily brilliant and penetrating in its final glow, fell full
upon the faces of these two as they were framed in profile by the
door.
One was the face of Kate Minster, the woman he was to wed. The
other was the face of Jessica Law-ton, the woman whose life he had
despoiled.
Horace realized nothing else so swiftly as that he had not been
seen, and, with an instinctive lowering of the head and a quickened
step, he passed on. It was not until he had got out of the street
altogether that he breathed a long breath and was able to think.
Then he found himself trembling with excitement, as if he had been
through a battle or a burning house.
Reflection soon helped his nerves to quietude again. Evidently the
girl had opened a millinery shop, and evidently Miss Minster was
buying a bonnet of her. That was all there was of it, and surely there
was no earthly cause for perturbation in that. The young man had
thought so lightly of the Law-ton incident at Thanksgiving time that
it had never since occurred to him to ask Tracy about its sequel.
It came to his mind now that Tracy had probably helped her to
start the shop. “Damn Tracy!” he said to himself.
No, there was nothing to be uneasy about in the casual,
commercial meeting of these two women. He became quite clear on
this point as he strode along toward home. At his next meeting with
Kate it might do no harm to mention having seen her there in
passing, and to drop a hint as to the character of the girl whom she
was dealing with. He would see how the talk shaped itself, after the
Law-ton woman’s name had been mentioned. It was a great
nuisance, her coming to Thessaly, anyway. He didn’t wish her any
special harm, but if she got in his way here she should be crushed
like an insect. But, pshaw! it was silly to conceive injury or
embarrassment coming from her.
So with a laugh he dismissed the subject from his thoughts, and
went home to dine with his father, and gladdened the General’s
heart by a more or less elaborated account of the day’s momentous
event, in complete forgetfulness of the shock he had had.
In the dead of the night, however, he did think of it again with a
vengeance. He awoke screaming, and cold with frightened quakings,
under the spell of some hideous nightmare. When he thought upon
them, the terrors of his dream were purely fantastic and could not
be shaped into any kind of coherent form. But the profile of the
Lawton girl seemed to be a part of all these terrors, a twisted and
elongated side-face, with staring, empty eyes and lips down-drawn
like those of the Medusa’s head, and yet, strangely enough, with a
certain shifting effect of beauty upon it all under the warm light of a
winter sunset.
Horace lay a long time awake, deliberately striving to exorcise this
repellent countenance by fixing his thoughts upon the other face—
the strong, beautiful, queenly face of the girl who was to be his wife.
But he could not bring up before his mind’s eye this picture that he
wanted, and he could not drive the other away.
Sleep came again somehow, and there were no more bad dreams
to be remembered. In the morning Horace did not even recall very
distinctly the episode of the nightmare, but he discovered some
novel threads of gray at his temple as he brushed his hair, and for
the first time in his life, too, he took a drink of spirits before
breakfast.
 CHAPTER XXIV.—A VEHEMENT
RESOLVE.

T
he sloppy snow went away at last, and the reluctant frost was
forced to follow, yet not before it had wreaked its spite by
softening all the country roads into dismal swamps of mud,
and heaving into painful confusion of holes and hummocks the
pavements on Thessaly’s main streets. But in compensation the birds
came back, and the crocus and hyacinth showed themselves, and
buds warmed to life again along the tender silk-brown boughs and
melted into the pale bright green of a springs new foliage. Overcoats
disappeared, and bare-legged boys with poles and strings of fish
dawned upon the vision. The air was laden with the perfume of lilacs
and talk about baseball.
From this to midsummer seemed but a step. The factory workmen
walked more wearily up the hill in the heat to their noonday dinners;
lager-beer kegs advanced all at once to be the chief staple of freight
traffic at the railway dépôt. People who could afford to take
travelling vacations began to make their plans or to fulfil them, and
those who could not began musing pleasantly upon the charms of
hop-picking in September. And then, lo! it was autumn, and young
men added with pride another unit to the sum of their age, and their
mothers and sisters secretly subtracted such groups or fractions of
units as were needful, and felt no more compunction at thus
hoodwinking Time than if he had been a customs-officer.
The village of Thessaly, which like a horizon encompassed most of
the individuals whom we know, could tell little more than this of the
months that had passed since Thanksgiving Day, now once again the
holiday closest at hand. The seasons of rest and open-air
amusement lay behind it, and in front was a vista made of toil.
There had been many deaths, and still more numerous births, and
none in either class mattered much save under the roof-tree actually
blessed or afflicted. The year had been fairly prosperous, and the
legislature had passed the bill which at New Year’s would enable the
village to call itself a city.
Of the people with whom this story is concerned, there is scarcely
more to record during this lapse of time.
Jessica Lawton was perhaps the one most conscious of change. At
the very beginning of spring, indeed on the very day when Horace
had his momentary fright in passing the shop, Miss Minster had
visited her, had brought a reasonably comprehensive plan for the
Girls’ Resting House, as she wanted it called, and had given her a
considerable sum of money to carry out this plan. For a long time it
puzzled Jessica a good deal that Miss Minster never came again. The
scheme took on tangible form; some score of work-girls availed
themselves of its privileges, and the result thus far involved less
friction and more substantial success than Jessica had dared to
expect. It seemed passing strange that Miss Minster, who had been
so deeply enthusiastic at first, should never have cared to come and
see the enterprise, now that it was in working order. Once or twice
Miss Tabitha had dropped in, and professed to be greatly pleased
with everything, but even in her manner there was an indefinable
alteration which forbade questions about the younger lady.
There were rumors about in the town which might have helped
Jessica to an explanation had they reached her. The village gossips
did not fail to note that the Minster family made a much longer
sojourn this year at Newport, and then at Brick Church, New Jersey,
than they had ever done before; and gradually the intelligence sifted
about that young Horace Boyce had spent a considerable portion of
his summer vacation with them. Thessaly could put two and two
together as well as any other community. The understanding little by
little spread its way that Horace was going to marry into the Minster
millions.
 If there were repinings over this foreseen event, they were
carefully dissembled. People who knew the young man liked him well
enough. His professional record was good, and he had made a
speech on the Fourth of July which pleased everybody except ’Squire
Gedney; but then, the spiteful old “Cal” never liked anybody’s
speeches save his own. Even more satisfaction was felt, however, on
the score of the General. His son was a showy young fellow, smart
and well-dressed, no doubt, but perhaps a trifle too much given to
patronizing folks who had not been to Europe, and did not scrub
themselves all over with cold water, and put on a clean shirt with
both collar and cuffs attached, every morning. But for the General
there was a genuine affection. It pleased Thessaly to note that,
since he had begun to visit at the home of the Minsters, other signs
of social rehabilitation had followed, and that he himself drank less
and led a more orderly life than of yore. When his intimates jokingly
congratulated him on the rumors of his son’s good fortune, the
General tacitly gave them confirmation by his smile.
If Jessica had heard these reports, she might have traced at once
to its source Miss Minster’s sudden and inexplicable coolness. Not
hearing them, she felt grieved and perplexed for a time, and then
schooled herself into resignation as she recalled Reuben Tracy’s
warning about the way rich people took up whims and dropped
them again, just as fancy dictated.
It was on the first day of November that the popular rumor as to
Horace’s prospects reached her, and this was a day memorable for
vastly more important occurrences in the history of industrial
Thessaly.
The return of cold weather had been marked, among other signs
of the season, by a renewed disposition on the part of Ben Lawton
to drop in to the millinery shop, and sit around by the fire in the
inner room. Ben came this day somewhat earlier than usual—the
midday meal was in its preliminary stages of preparation under
Lucinda’s red hands—and it was immediately evident that he was
more excited over something that had happened outside than by his
expectation of getting a dinner.
“There’s the very old Nick to pay down in the village!” he said, as
he put his feet on the stove-hearth. “Heard about it, any of you?”
Ben had scarcely ascended in the social scale during the scant
year that had passed, though the general average of whiteness in
his paper collars had somewhat risen, and his hair and straggling
dry-mud-colored beard were kept more duly under the subjection of
shears. His clothes, too, were whole and unworn, but they hung
upon his slouching and round-shouldered figure with “poor white”
written in every misfitting fold and on every bagging projection.
Jessica had resigned all hope that he would ever be anything but a
canal boatman in mien or ambition, but her affection for him had
grown rather than diminished; and she was glad that Lucinda, in
whom there had been more marked personal improvements, seemed
also to like him better.
No, Jessica said, she had heard nothing.
“Well, the Minster furnaces was all shut down this morning, and so
was the work out at the ore-beds at Juno, and the men, boys, and
girls in the Thessaly Company’s mills all got word that wages was
going to be cut down. You can bet there’s a buzz around town, with
them three things coming all together, smack!”
“I suppose so,” answered Jessica, still bending over her work of
cleaning and picking out some plumes. “That looks bad for business
this winter, doesn’t it?”
Ben’s relations with business, or with industry generally, were of
the most remote and casual sort, but he had a lively objective
interest in the topic.
“Why, it’s the worst thing that ever happened,” he said, with
conviction. “There’s seven hundred men thrown out already” (the
figure was really two hundred and twelve), “and more than a
thousand more got to git unless they’ll work for starvation wages.”
“It seems very hard,” the girl made reply. The idea came to her
that very possibly this would put an extra strain upon the facilities
and financial strength of the Resting House.
“Hard!” her father exclaimed, stretching his hands over the stove-
top; “them rich people are harder than Pharaoh’s heart. What do
them Minsters care about poor folks, whether they starve or freeze
to death, or anything?”
“Oh, it is the Minsters, you say!” Jessica looked up now, with a
new interest. “Sure enough, they own the furnaces. How could they
have done such a thing, with winter right ahead of us?”
“It’s all to make more money,” put in Lucinda. “Them that don’t
need it’ll do anything to get it. What do they care? That Kate Minster
of yours, for instance, she’ll wear her sealskin and eat pie just the
same. What does it matter to her?”
“No; she has a good heart. I know she has,” said Jessica. “She
wouldn’t willingly do harm to any one. But perhaps she has nothing
to do with managing such things. Yes, that must be it.”
“I guess Schuyler Tenney and Hod Boyce about run the thing,
from what I hear,” commented the father. “Tenney’s been bossing
around since summer begun, and Boyce is the lawyer, so they say.”
Ben suddenly stopped, and looked first at Jessica, then at Lucinda.
Catching the latter’s eye, he made furtive motions to her to leave the
room; but she either did not or would not understand them, and
continued stolidly at her work.
“That Kate you spoke about,” he went on stum-blingly, nodding
hints at Lucinda to go away as he spoke, “she’s the tall girl, with the
black eyes and her chin up in the air, ain’t she?”
“Yes,” the two sisters answered, speaking together.
 “Well, as I was saying about Hod Boyce,” Ben said, and then
stopped in evident embarrassment. Finally he added, confusedly
avoiding Jessica’s glance, “‘Cindy, won’t you jest step outside for a
minute? I want to tell your sister something—something you don’t
know about.”
“She knows about Horace Boyce, father,” said Jessica, flushing, but
speaking calmly. “There is no need of her going.”
Lucinda, however, wiped her hands on her apron, and went out
into the store, shutting the door behind her. Then Ben,
ostentatiously regarding the hands he held out over the stove, and
turning them as if they had been fowls on a spit, sought hesitatingly
for words with which to unbosom himself.
“You see,” he began, “as I was a-saying, Hod Boyce is the lawyer,
and he’s pretty thick with Schuyler Tenney, his father’s partner,
which, of course, is only natural; and Tenney he kind of runs the
whole thing—and—and that’s it, don’t you see!”
“You didn’t send Lucinda out in order to tell me that, surely?”
“Well, no. But Hod being the lawyer, as I said, why, don’t you see,
he has a good deal to say for himself with the women-folks, and he’s
been off with them down to the sea-side, and so it’s come about
that they say—”
“They say what?” The girl had laid down her work altogether.
“They say he’s going to marry the girl you call Kate—the big one
with the black eyes.”
The story was out. Jessica sat still under the revelation for a
moment, and held up a restraining hand when her father offered to
speak further. Then she rose and walked to and fro across the little
room, in front of the stove where Ben sat, her hands hanging at her
side and her brows bent with thought. At last she stopped before
him and said:
 “Tell me all over again about the stopping of the works—all you
know about it.”
Ben Lawton complied, and re-stated, with as much detail as he
could command, the facts already exposed.
The girl listened carefully, but with growing disappointment.
Somehow the notion had arisen in her mind that there would be
something important in this story—something which it would be of
use to understand. But her brain could make nothing significant out
of this commonplace narrative of a lockout and a threatened dispute
about wages. Gradually, as she thought, two things rose as
certainties upon the surface of her reflections.
“That scoundrel is to blame for both things. He advised her to
avoid me, and he advised her to do this other mischief.”
“I thought you’d like to know,” Ben put in, deferentially. He felt a
very humble individual indeed when his eldest daughter paced up
and down and spoke in that tone.
“Yes, I’m glad I know,” she said, swiftly. She eyed her father in an
abstracted way for an instant, and then added, as if thinking aloud:
“Well, then, my fine gentleman, you—simply—shall—not—marry Miss
Minster!”
Ben moved uneasily in his seat, as if this warning had been
personally addressed to him. “It would be pretty rough, for a fact,
wouldn’t it?” he said.
“Well, it won’t be at all!” she made emphatic answer.
“I don’t know as you can do much to pervent it, Jess,” he ventured
to say.
“Can’t I? Cant I!” she exclaimed, with grim earnestness. “Wait and
see.”
 Ben had waited all his life, and he proceeded now to take her at
her word, sitting very still, and fixing a ruminative gaze on the side
of the little stove. “All right,” he said, wrapped in silence and the
placidity of contented suspense.
But Jessica was now all eagerness and energy. She opened the
store door, and called out to Lucinda with business-like decision of
tone: “Come in now, and hurry dinner up as fast as you can. I want
to catch the 1.20 train for Tecumseh.”
The other two made no comment on this hasty resolve, but during
the brief and not over-inviting meal which followed, watched their
kinswoman with side-glances of uneasy surprise. The girl herself
hastened through her dinner without a word of conversation, and
then disappeared within the little chamber where she and Lucinda
slept together.
It was only when she came out again, with her hat and cloak on
and a little travelling-bag in her hand, that she felt impelled to throw
some light on her intention. She took from her purse a bank-note
and gave it to her sister.
“Shut up the store at half-past four or five today,” she said; “and
there are two things I want you to do for me outside. Go around the
furniture stores, and get some kind of small sofa that will turn into a
bed at night, and whatever extra bed-clothes we need for it—as
cheap as you can. We’ve got a pillow to spare, haven’t we? You can
put those two chairs out in the Resting House; that will make a place
for the bed in this room. You must have it all ready when I get back
to-morrow night. You needn’t say anything to the girls, except that I
am away for a day. And then—or no: you can do it better, father.”
The girl had spoken swiftly, but with ready precision. As she
turned now to the wondering Ben, she lost something of her
collected demeanor, and hesitated for a moment.
“I want you—I want you to see Reuben Tracy, and ask him to
come here at six to-morrow,” she said. She deliberated upon this for
an instant, and held out her hand as if she had changed her mind.
Then she nodded, and said: “Or no: tell him I will come to his office,
and at six sharp. It will be better that way.”
When she had perfunctorily kissed them both, and gone, silence
fell upon the room. Ben took his pipe out of his pocket and looked at
it with tentative longing, and then at the stove.
“You can go out in the yard and smoke, if you want to, but not in
here,” said Lucinda, promptly. “You wouldn’t dare think of such a
thing if she were here,” she added, with reproach.
Ben put back his pipe and seated himself again by the fire.
“Mighty queer girl, that, eh?” he said. “When she gets stirred up,
she’s a hustler, eh?”
“It must be she takes it from you,” said Lucinda, with a modified
grin of irony.
The sarcasm fell short of its mark. “No,” said Ben, with quiet
candor, “she gets it from my father. He used to count on licking a
lock-tender somewhere along the canal every time he made a trip. I
remember there was one particular fellow on the Montezuma Ma’ash
that he used to whale for choice, but any of ’em would do on a
pinch. He was jest blue-mouldy for a fight all the while, your
grandfather was. He was Benjamin Franklin Lawton, the same as
me, but somehow I never took much to rassling round or fighting.
It’s more in my line to take things easy.”
Lucinda bore an armful of dishes out into the kitchen, without
making any reply, and Ben, presently wearying of solitude, followed
to where she bent over the sink, enveloped in soap-suds and steam.
“I suppose you’ve got an idea what she’s gone for?” he
propounded, with caution.
“It’s a ‘who’ she’s gone for,” said Lucinda.
 Pronouns were not Ben’s strong point, and he said, “Yes, I
suppose it is,” rather helplessly. He waited in patience for more
information, and by and by it came.
“If I was her, I wouldn’t do it,” said Lucinda, slapping a plate
impatiently with the wet cloth.
“No, I don’t suppose you would. In some ways you always had
more sense than people give you credit for, ‘Cindy,” remarked the
father, with guarded flattery. “Jess, now, she’s one of your hoity-toity
kind—flare up and whirl around like a wheel on a tree in the Fourth
of July fireworks.”
“She’s head and shoulders above all the other Lawtons there ever
was or ever will be, and don’t you forget it!” declared the loyal
Lucinda, with fervor.
“That’s what I say always,” assented Ben. “Only—I thought you
said you didn’t think she was quite right in doing what she’s going to
do.”
“It’s right enough; only she was happy here, and this’ll make her
miserable again—though, of course, she was always letting her mind
run on it, and perhaps she’ll enjoy having it with her—only the girls
may talk—and—”
Lucinda let her sentence die off unfinished in a rattle of knives and
spoons in the dish-pan. Her mind was sorely perplexed.
“Well, Cindy,” said Ben, in the frankness of despair, “I’m dot-rotted
if I know what you are talking about.” He grew pathetic as he went
on: “I’m your father and I’m her father, and there ain’t neither of
you got a better friend on earth than I be; but you never tell me
anything, any more’n as if I was a last year’s bird’s-nest.”
Lucinda’s reserve yielded to this appeal. “Well, dad,” she said, with
unwonted graciousness of tone, “Jess has gone to Tecumseh to
bring back—to bring her little boy. She hasn’t told me so, but I know
it.”
 The father nodded his head in comprehension, and said nothing.
He had vaguely known of the existence of the child, and he saw
more or less clearly the reason for this present step. The shame and
sorrow which were fastened upon his family through this grandson
whom he had never seen, and never spoken of above a whisper,
seemed to rankle in his heart with a new pain of mingled bitterness
and compassion.
He mechanically took out his pipe, filled it from loose tobacco in
his pocket, and struck a match to light it. Then he recalled that the
absent daughter! objected to his smoking in the house, on account
of the wares in her shop, and let the flame burn itself out in the
coal-scuttle. A whimsical query as to whether this calamitous boy
had also been named Benjamin Franklin crossed his confused mind,
and then it perversely raised the question whether the child, if so
named, would be a “hustler” or not. Ben leaned heavily against the
door-sill, and surrendered himself to humiliation.
“What I don’t understand,” he heard Lucinda saying after a time,
“is why she took this spurt all of a sudden.”
“It’s all on account of that Gawd-damned Hod Boyce!” groaned
Ben.
“Yes; you told her something about him. What was it?”
“Only that they all say that he’s going to marry that big Minster
girl—the black-eyed one.”
Lucinda turned away from the sink, threw down her dish-cloth
with a thud, and put her arms akimbo and her shoulders well back.
Watching her, Ben felt that somehow this girl, too, took after her
grandfather rather than him.
“Oh, is he!” she said, her voice high-pitched and vehement. “I
guess we’ll have something to say about that!”
 CHAPTER XXV.—A VISITATION OF
ANGELS.

R
EUBEN Tracy waited in his office next day for the visit of the
milliner, but, to tell the truth, devoted very little thought to
wondering about her errand.
The whole summer and autumn, as he sat now and smoked in
meditation upon them, seemed to have been an utterly wasted
period in his life. He had done nothing worth recalling. His mind had
not even evolved good ideas. Through all the interval which lay
between this November day and that afternoon in March, when he
had been for the only time inside the Minster house, one solitary set
thought had possessed his mind. Long ago it had formulated itself in
his brain; found its way to the silent, spiritual tongue with which we
speak to ourselves. He loved Kate Minster, and had had room for no
other feeling all these months.
At first, when this thought was still new to him, he had hugged it
to his heart with delight. Now the melancholy days indeed were
come, and he had only suffering and disquiet from it. She had never
even answered his letter proffering assistance. She was as far away
from him, as coldly unattainable, as the north star. It made him
wretched to muse upon her beauty and charm; his heart was weary
with hopeless longing for her friendship—yet he was powerless to
command either mind or heart. They clung to her with painful
persistency; they kept her image before him, whispered her name in
his ear, filled all his dreams with her fair presence, to make each
wakening a fresh grief.
In his revolt against this weakness, Reuben had burned the little
scented note for which so reverential a treasure-box had been made
in his desk. But this was of no avail. He could never enter that small
inner room where he now sat without glancing at the drawer which
had once been consecrated to the letter.
It was humiliating that he should prove to have so little sense and
strength. He bit his cigar fiercely with annoyance when this aspect of
the case rose before him. If love meant anything, it meant a mutual
sentiment. By all the lights of philosophy, it was not possible to love
a person who did not return that love. This he said to himself over
and over again, but the argument was not helpful. Still his mind
remained perversely full of Kate Minster.
During all this time he had taken no step to probe the business
which had formed the topic of that single disagreeable talk with his
partner in the preceding March. Miss Minster’s failure to answer his
letter had deeply wounded his pride, and had put it out of the
question that he should seem to meddle in her affairs. He had never
mentioned the subject again to Horace. The two young men had
gone through the summer and autumn under the same office roof,
engaged very often upon the same business, but with mutual
formality and personal reserve. No controversy had arisen between
them, but Reuben was conscious now that they had ceased to be
friends, as men understand the term, for a long time.
For his own part, his dislike for his partner had grown so deep and
strong that he felt doubly bound to guard himself against showing it.
It was apparent to the most superficial introspection that a good
deal of his aversion to Horace arose from the fact that he was on
friendly terms with the Minsters, and could see Miss Kate every day.
He never looked at his partner without remembering this, and
extracting unhappiness from the thought. But he realized that this
was all the more reason why he should not yield to his feelings. Both
his pride and his sense of fairness restrained him from quarrelling
with Horace on grounds of that sort.
But the events of the last day or two had opened afresh the
former dilemma about a rupture over the Minster works business.
Since Schuyler Tenney had blossomed forth as the visible head of
the rolling-mills, Reuben had, in spite of his pique and of his
resolution not to be betrayed into meddling, kept a close watch upon
events connected with the two great iron manufacturing
establishments. He had practically learned next to nothing, but he
was none the less convinced that a swindle underlay what was going
on.
It was with this same conviction that he now strove to understand
the shutting-down of the furnaces and ore-fields owned by the
Minsters, and the threatened lockout in the Thessaly Manufacturing
Company’s mills. But it was very difficult to see where dishonesty
could come in. The furnaces and ore-supply had been stopped by an
order of the pig-iron trust, but of course the owners would be amply
compensated for that. The other company’s resolve to reduce wages
meant, equally of course, a desire to make up on the pay-list the
loss entailed by the closing of the furnaces, which compelled it to
secure its raw material elsewhere. Taken by themselves, each
transaction was intelligible. But considered together, and as both
advised by the same men, they seemed strangely in conflict. What
possible reason could the Thessaly Company, for example, have for
urging Mrs. Minster to enter a trust, the chief purpose of which was
to raise the price of pig-iron which they themselves bought almost
entirely? The problem puzzled Reuben. He racked his brain in futile
search for the missing clew to this financial paradox. Evidently there
was such a clew somewhere; an initial fact which would explain the
whole mystery, if only it could be got at. He had for his own
satisfaction collected some figures about the Minster business, partly
exact, partly estimated, and he had worked laboriously over these in
the effort to discover the false quantity which he felt sure was
somewhere concealed. But thus far his work had been in vain.
Just now a strange idea for the moment fascinated his inclination.
It was nothing else than the thought of putting his pride in his
pocket—of going to Miss Minster and saying frankly: “I believe you
are being robbed. In Heaven’s name, give me a chance to find out,
and to protect you if I am right! I shall ask no reward. I shall not
even ask ever to see you again, once the rescue is achieved. But oh!
do not send me away until then—I pray you that!”
While the wild project urged itself upon his mind the man himself
seemed able to stand apart and watch this battle of his own
thoughts and longings, like an outside observer. He realized that the
passion he had nursed so long in silence had affected his mental
balance. He was conscious of surprise, almost of a hysterical kind of
amusement, that Reuben Tracy should be so altered as to think
twice about such a proceeding. Then he fell to deploring and angrily
reviling the change that had come over him; and lo! all at once he
found himself strangely glad of the change, and was stretching forth
his arms in a fantasy of yearning toward a dream figure in creamy-
white robes, girdled with a silken cord, and was crying out in his
soul, “I love you!”
The vision faded away in an instant as there came the sound of
rapping at the outer door. Reuben rose to his feet, his brain still
bewildered by the sun-like brilliancy of the picture which had been
burned into it, and confusedly collected his thoughts as he walked
across the larger room. His partner had been out of town some
days, and he had sent the office-boy home, in order that the Lawton
girl might be able to talk in freedom. The knocking; was that of a
woman’s hand. Evidently it was Jessica, who had come an hour or so
earlier than she had appointed. He wondered vaguely what her
errand might be, as he opened the door.
In the dingy hallway stood two figures instead of one, both thickly
clad and half veiled. The waning light of late afternoon did not
enable him to recognize his visitors with any certainty. The smaller
lady of the two might be Jessica—the the who stood farthest away.
He had almost resolved that it was, in this moment of mental
dubiety, when the other, putting out her gloved hand, said to him:
“I am afraid you don’t remember me, it is so long since we met.
This is my sister, Mr. Tracy—Miss Ethel Minster.”
 The door-knob creaked in Reuben’s hand as he pressed upon it for
support, and there were eccentric flashes of light before his eyes.
“Oh, I am so glad!” was what he said. “Do come in—do come in.”
He led the way into the office with a dazed sense of heading a
triumphal procession, and then stopped in the centre of the room,
suddenly remembering that he had not shaken hands. Was it too
late now? To give himself time to think, he lighted the gas in both
offices and closed all the shutters.
“Oh, I am so glad!” he repeated, as he turned to the two ladies.
The radiant smile on his face bore out his words. “I am afraid the
little room—my own place—is full of cigar-smoke. Let me see about
the fire here.” He shook the grate vehemently, and poked down the
coals through one of the upper windows. “Perhaps it will be warm
enough here. Let me bring some chairs.” He bustled into the inner
room, and pushed out his own revolving desk-chair, and drew up two
others from different ends of the office. The easiest chair of all,
which was at Horace’s table, he did not touch. Then, when his two
visitors had taken seats, he beamed down upon them once more,
and said for the third time:
“I really am delighted!”
Miss Kate put up her short veil with a frank gesture. The
unaffected pleasure which shone in Reuben’s face and radiated from
his manner was something more exuberant than she had expected,
but it was grateful to her, and she and her sister both smiled in
response.
“I have an apology to make first of all, Mr. Tracy,” she said, and
her voice was the music of the seraphim to his senses. “I don’t think
—I am afraid I never answered your kind letter last spring. It is a
bad habit of mine; I am the worst correspondent in the world. And
then we went away so soon afterward.”
“I beg that you won’t mention it,” said Reuben; and indeed it
seemed to him to be a trivial thing now—not worth a thought, much