Had she known the contents of the will before John Grier
was buried, she would not have gone to the funeral. Egotistic she had
known Grier to be, and she imagined the will to be a sudden result of
anger. He was dead and buried. The places that knew him knew him no
more. All in an hour, as it were, the man Tarboe--that dominant,
resourceful figure--had come into wealth and power.
After Junia read the substance of the will, she went springing up the
mountain-side, as it were to work off her excitement by fatigue. At the
mountain-top she gazed over the River St. Lawrence with an eye blind to
all except this terrible distortion of life. Yet through her
obfuscation, there ran admiration for Tarboe. What a man he was! He
had captured John Grier as quickly and as securely as a night fisherman
spears a sturgeon in the flare at the bow of the boat. Tarboe's ability
was as marked as John Grier's mad policy. It was strange that Tarboe
should have bewildered and bamboozled--if that word could be used--the
old millowner. It was as curious and thrilling as John Grier's
fanaticism.
Already the pinch of corruption had nipped his flesh; he was useless,
motionless in his narrow house, and yet, unseen but powerful, his
influence went on. It shamed a wife and son; it blackened the doors
of a home; it penalized a family.
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