Ozias now and then, as he talked, motioned Jerome, who put another stick of wood in the stove.

The whole atmosphere, spiritual and physical, seemed to grow combustible, and as if at any moment a word or a thought might cause a leap into flame.

A spirit of anarchy and revolution was caged in that little close room, bound to a shoemaker's bench by the chain of labor for bread.

The spirit was harmless enough, for its cage and its chain were not to be escaped or forced, strengthened as they were by the usage of a whole life.

Ozias Lamb would deliver himself of riotous sentiments, but on that bench he would sit and peg shoes till his dying day.