My father had died while a lawsuit for the purpose of settling his father's estate was pending, and Rucker had thought, and so had my mother, that this lawsuit would soon be ended, and that she would have the property, his share of which had been left to her by my father's will.

I have never known why the law stood in my mother's way, or why it was at last that Rucker gave up all hope and vented his spite on my mother and on me.

I do not blame him for feeling put out, for property is property after all, but to abuse me and my mother shows what a bad man he was.

Sometimes he used to call me a damned little beggar.

The first time he did that my mother looked at him with a kind of lost look as if all the happiness in life were gone.