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Reinforcement
Learning for
Finance
Solve Problems in Finance with
CNN and RNN Using the
TensorFlow Library
—
Samit Ahlawat
 Reinforcement
Learning for Finance
Solve Problems in Finance
with CNN and RNN Using
the TensorFlow Library

Samit Ahlawat
Reinforcement Learning for Finance: Solve Problems in Finance with CNN
and RNN Using the TensorFlow Library

Samit Ahlawat
Irvington, NJ, USA

ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-8834-4 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-8835-1

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8835-1

Copyright © 2023 by Samit Ahlawat

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part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
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publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal
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To my family and friends without whose support this book
would not have been possible.
Table of Contents
About the Author���������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix

Acknowledgments�������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi

Preface����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xiii

Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xv

Chapter 1: Overview�����������������������������������������������������������������������������1
1.1 Methods for Training Neural Networks�����������������������������������������������������������2
1.2 Machine Learning in Finance��������������������������������������������������������������������������3
1.3 Structure of the Book��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������4

Chapter 2: Introduction to TensorFlow�������������������������������������������������5

2.1 Tensors and Variables�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������5
2.2 Graphs, Operations, and Functions���������������������������������������������������������������11
2.3 Modules��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������14
2.4 Layers�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17
2.5 Models����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������25
2.6 Activation Functions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33
2.7 Loss Functions����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37
2.8 Metrics����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������46
2.9 Optimizers�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������77
2.10 Regularizers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������96
2.11 TensorBoard����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������120

v
Table of Contents

2.12 Dataset Manipulation��������������������������������������������������������������������������������122

2.13 Gradient Tape��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������126

Chapter 3: Convolutional Neural Networks���������������������������������������139

3.1 A Simple CNN����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������140
3.2 Neural Network Layers Used in CNNs���������������������������������������������������������148
3.3 Output Shapes and Trainable Parameters of CNNs�������������������������������������150
3.4 Classifying Fashion MNIST Images�������������������������������������������������������������152
3.5 Identifying Technical Patterns in Security Prices����������������������������������������159
3.6 Using CNNs for Recognizing Handwritten Digits�����������������������������������������172

Chapter 4: Recurrent Neural Networks���������������������������������������������177

4.1 Simple RNN Layer���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������178
4.2 LSTM Layer�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������182
4.3 GRU Layer���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������186
4.4 Customized RNN Layers������������������������������������������������������������������������������188
4.5 Stock Price Prediction���������������������������������������������������������������������������������190
4.6 Correlation in Asset Returns�����������������������������������������������������������������������207

Chapter 5: Reinforcement Learning Theory��������������������������������������233

5.1 Basics���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������234
5.2 Methods for Estimating the Markov Decision Problem�������������������������������240
5.3 Value Estimation Methods���������������������������������������������������������������������������241
5.3.1 Dynamic Programming�����������������������������������������������������������������������242
5.3.2 Generalized Policy Iteration����������������������������������������������������������������265
5.3.3 Monte Carlo Method���������������������������������������������������������������������������277
5.3.4 Temporal Difference (TD) Learning�����������������������������������������������������284
5.3.5 Cartpole Balancing�����������������������������������������������������������������������������305

vi
 Table of Contents

5.4 Policy Learning�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������319

5.4.1 Policy Gradient Theorem���������������������������������������������������������������������319
5.4.2 REINFORCE Algorithm�������������������������������������������������������������������������321
5.4.3 Policy Gradient with State-Action Value Function Approximation������323
5.4.4 Policy Learning Using Cross Entropy��������������������������������������������������325
5.5 Actor-Critic Algorithms��������������������������������������������������������������������������������326
5.5.1 Stochastic Gradient–Based Actor-Critic Algorithms���������������������������329
5.5.2 Building a Trading Strategy����������������������������������������������������������������330
5.5.3 Natural Actor-Critic Algorithms�����������������������������������������������������������346
5.5.4 Cross Entropy–Based Actor-Critic Algorithms������������������������������������347

Chapter 6: Recent RL Algorithms�����������������������������������������������������349

6.1 Double Deep Q-Network: DDQN������������������������������������������������������������������349
6.2 Balancing a Cartpole Using DDQN���������������������������������������������������������������353
6.3 Dueling Double Deep Q-Network����������������������������������������������������������������356
6.4 Noisy Networks�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������357
6.5 Deterministic Policy Gradient����������������������������������������������������������������������359
6.5.1 Off-Policy Actor-Critic Algorithm���������������������������������������������������������360
6.5.2 Deterministic Policy Gradient Theorem����������������������������������������������361
6.6 Trust Region Policy Optimization: TRPO������������������������������������������������������362
6.7 Natural Actor-Critic Algorithm: NAC�������������������������������������������������������������368
6.8 Proximal Policy Optimization: PPO��������������������������������������������������������������369
6.9 Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient: DDPG��������������������������������������������������370
6.10 D4PG���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������373
6.11 TD3PG�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������376
6.12 Soft Actor-Critic: SAC��������������������������������������������������������������������������������379

vii
Table of Contents

6.13 Variational Autoencoder����������������������������������������������������������������������������384

6.14 VAE for Dimensionality Reduction�������������������������������������������������������������389
6.15 Generative Adversarial Networks��������������������������������������������������������������399

Bibliography�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������403

Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������411

viii
About the Author
Samit Ahlawat is Senior Vice President in
Quantitative Research, Capital Modeling, at
JPMorgan Chase in New York, USA. In his
current role, he is responsible for building
trading strategies for asset management
and for building risk management models.
His research interests include artificial
intelligence, risk management, and
algorithmic trading strategies. He has given CQF Institute talks on artificial
intelligence, has authored several research papers in finance, and holds a
patent for facial recognition technology. In his spare time, he contributes
to open source code.

ix
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation for my friends and
coworkers, in academia and the workplace, who encouraged me to write
this book.

xi
Preface
When I began using artificial intelligence tools in quantitative financial
research, I could not find a comprehensive introductory text focusing on
financial applications. Neural network libraries like TensorFlow, PyTorch,
and Caffe had made tremendous contributions in the rapid development,
testing, and deployment of deep neural networks, but I found most
applications restricted to computer science, computer vision, and robotics.
Having to use reinforcement learning algorithms in finance served as
another reminder of the paucity of texts in this field. Furthermore, I found
myself referring to scholarly articles and papers for mathematical proofs of
new reinforcement learning algorithms. This led me to write this book to
provide a one-stop resource for Python programmers to learn the theory
behind reinforcement learning, augmented with practical examples drawn
from the field of finance.
In practical applications, reinforcement learning draws upon deep
neural networks. To facilitate exposition of topics in reinforcement
learning and for continuity, this book also provides an introduction to
TensorFlow and covers neural network topics like convolutional neural
networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs).
Finally, this book also introduces readers to writing modular, reusable,
and extensible reinforcement learning code. Having worked on developing
trading strategies using reinforcement learning and publishing papers,
I felt existing reinforcement learning libraries like TF-Agents are tightly
coupled with the underlying implementation framework and do not

xiii
Preface

express central concepts in reinforcement learning in a manner that is

modular enough for someone conversant with concepts to pick up
TF-­Agent library usage or extend its algorithms for specific applications.
The code samples covered in this book provide examples of how to write
modular code for reinforcement learning.

xiv
Introduction
Reinforcement learning is a rapidly growing area of artificial intelligence
that involves an agent learning from past experience of rewards gained
by taking specific actions in certain states. The agent seeks to learn a
policy prescribing the optimum action in each state with the objective of
maximizing expected discounted future rewards. It is an unsupervised
learning technique where the agent learns the optimum policy by past
interactions with the environment. Supervised learning, by contrast, seeks
to learn the pattern of output corresponding to each state in training
data. It attempts to train the model parameters in order to get a close
correspondence between predicted and actual output for a given set of
inputs. This book outlines the theory behind reinforcement learning
and illustrates it with examples of implementations using TensorFlow.
The examples demonstrate the theory and implementation details of the
algorithms, supplemented with a discussion of corresponding APIs from
TensorFlow and examples drawn from quantitative finance. It guides
a reader familiar with Python programming from basic to advanced
understanding of reinforcement learning algorithms, coupled with a
comprehensive discussion on how to use state-of-the-art software libraries
to implement advanced algorithms in reinforcement learning.
Most applications of reinforcement learning have focused on robotics
or computer science tasks. By focusing on examples drawn from finance,
this book illustrates a spectrum of financial applications that can benefit
from reinforcement learning.

xv
CHAPTER 1

Overview
Deep neural networks have transformed virtually every scientific human
endeavor – from image recognition, medical imaging, robotics, and self-­
driving cars to space exploration. The extent of transformation heralded
by neural networks is unrivaled in contemporary human history, judging
by the range of new products that leverage neural networks. Smartphones,
smartwatches, and digital assistants – to name a few – demonstrate the
promise of neural networks and signal their emergence as a mainstream
technology. The rapid development of artificial intelligence and machine
learning algorithms has coincided with increasing computational power,
enabling them to run rapidly. Keeping pace with new developments in
this field, various open source libraries implementing neural networks
have blossomed. Python has emerged as the lingua franca of the artificial
intelligence programming community. This book aims to equip Python-­
proficient programmers with a comprehensive knowledge on how to use
the TensorFlow library for coding deep neural networks and reinforcement
learning algorithms effectively. It achieves this by providing detailed
mathematical proofs of key theorems, supplemented by implementation of
those algorithms to solve real-life problems.
Finance has been an early adopter of artificial intelligence algorithms
with the application of neural networks in designing trading strategies
as early as the 1980s. For example, White (1988) applied a simple
neural network to find nonlinear patterns in IBM stock price. However,
recent cutting-edge research on reinforcement learning has focused

© Samit Ahlawat 2023 1

S. Ahlawat, Reinforcement Learning for Finance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8835-1_1
Chapter 1 Overview

predominantly on robotics, computer science, or interactive game-­

playing. The lack of financial applications has led many to question
the applicability of deep neural networks in finance where traditional
quantitative models are ubiquitous. Finance practitioners feel that the
lack of rigorous mathematical proofs and transparency about how neural
networks work has restricted their wider adoption within finance. This
book aims to address both of these concerns by focusing on real-life
financial applications of neural networks.

1.1 Methods for Training Neural Networks

Neural networks can be trained using one of the following three methods:

1. Supervised learning involves using a training

dataset with known output, also called ground
truth values. For a classification task, this would
be the true labels, while for a regression task, it
would be the actual output value. A loss function
is formulated that measures the deviation of the
model output from the true output. This function is
minimized with respect to model parameters using
stochastic gradient descent.

2. Unsupervised learning methods use a training

dataset made up of input features without any
knowledge of the true output values. The objective
is to classify inputs into clusters for clustering or
dimension reduction applications or for identifying
outliers.

3. Reinforcement learning involves an agent that

learns an optimal policy within the framework of
a Markov decision problem (MDP). The training

2
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The fire division was led by a band of music from the Neptune
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Juliet, a phœnix, many phœnices, Neptunes galore, burning
churches, a mother rescuing a child from an eagle’s nest, an Indian
maid parting from her lover, Liberties, sea-horses, tritons, Hebes, the
Battle of Bunker Hill, Cupids, mottoes like “From our vigilance you
derive safety,” “Duty, though in peril,” “We come to conquer and to
save,” “Industry and perseverance overcome every obstacle,”
“Combined to do good and not to injure,” “Semper paratus,” “We are
pledged to abstain from all intoxicating drinks.”
Among the fascinating objects carried in procession were the Bible
on which George Washington had taken the first presidential oath;
the printing press used by Benjamin Franklin in London, and a
modern press, for contrast, striking off an ode written for the
occasion; a foundry; a group of millers up to their eyes in meal as
they ground corn and bagged it; sections of Croton water pipe of
every dimension with examples of all the tools; a display of gold and
silverware of several thousand dollars’ value.
The Temperance Societies attracted especial attention. They
included gray-haired men, boys, mothers and daughters, and
numerous reformed drunkards. Their banners were inspiring. The
Bakers’ Temperance Benevolent Society carried a banner showing on
one side all the horrors of intemperance, “the lightning destroying
the false light that has already enticed the ship of the Inebriate to
his destruction; the moderate drinker coming on under easy sail, just
entering the sea of trouble; the first glass making its appearance on
the horizon; a figure representing beastly intoxication, another just
throwing off the shackles of intemperance; the Anchor of Hope
firmly planted in the Rock of Safety with the pledge of total
abstinence for its cable extending across the abyss of destruction
and winding through the land. On the other side, the Genius of
Temperance offered the Staff of Life and the Cup of Health; the
Temple of Science and Wisdom divided the picture with Peace,
Commerce, Mechanics, and Agriculture flanking. A smaller banner
showed the interior of a Bake House with the Temperate Bakers
cheerfully performing their work.”
Other banners were even more comprehensive.
The procession moved along with the usual open and shut effect.
There would come an abrupt halt with everybody in a jumble. Then
a quick start-off and a lengthening gap that must be closed on the
run. It was annoying, wearisome, and soon began to seem foolish.
Why should one half of the town wear its feet off marching past the
other half of the town whose feet were asleep with the long sitting
still?
By a stroke of luck, the Fire Kings made a long pause near the
residence on Broadway where Patty and her two families, old and
young, had been invited to watch the parade. RoBards was as
confused as a silly child when his son Keith recognized him and
advertised him with loud yells of “Papa!” He and Immy then came
bolting to the curb, followed by Patty.
People stared and made comments on the amazing thing that a
man’s wife should violate decorum with such public friendliness. It
was as bad manners as greeting a friend cordially on a Sunday.
Patty edged close to her husband and said—as if she knew it
would help him on his journey:
“Did you see how fat Harry Chalender is getting? He looked like an
idiot sitting up there while a man of your ability walks. It’s simply
disgusting!”
Oh, mystic comfort of contempt—the lean man’s for the fat; the
fat man’s for the lean; the failure’s for the conqueror! By the
alchemy of sympathy, RoBards’ anger was dissipated by finding its
duplicate in his wife’s heart. He smiled at her earnestness in a
matter that had but lately driven him frantic. It is thus that men
prove women excitable.
Then the bands ahead and abaft struck up at the same time but
not with the same tune and he had to move on, his mind and his
feet trying in vain to adapt themselves to both rackets.
It was two o’clock before the advanced guard of Washington
Grays galloped up in front of the City Hall. It was half past four when
the last man had passed in review, and Samuel Stevens, Esq.,
president of the Board of Water Commissioners, began his address.
He cried: “The works of Rome were built by soldiers and by
slaves. Ours was voted for by freemen, was constructed by freemen
—and we make the aspiration that in all ages to come it may bless
freemen, and freemen only!”
The president of the Croton Aqueduct Board followed, saying:
“The obstacles have disappeared! The hill has been leveled or
pierced, the stream and the valley have been overleaped, the rock
has been smitten! Nature, yielding to human industry, perseverance,
and skill, no longer withholds the boon she had before denied us. A
river, whose pure waters are gathered from the lakes of the
mountain-range, arrested and diverted in its course, after pouring its
tribute through a permanent and spacious archway for more than
forty miles, at length reaches our magnificent reservoirs, from
whence it is conducted by subterranean conduits, extending one
hundred and thirty additional miles, throughout the greatest portion
of our city.”
When he had finished, the ladies and gentlemen of the Sacred
Music Society sang the ode which General George P. Morris had
written at the request of the Corporation of the City of New York:

“Gushing from this living fountain,

Music pours a falling strain,
As the Goddess of the Mountain
Comes with all her sparkling train....

“Gently o’er the rippling water,

In her coral-shallop bright,
Glides the rock-king’s dove-eyed daughter,
Deck’d in robes of virgin white....

“Water leaps as if delighted

While the conquered foes retire!
Pale Contagion flies affrighted
With the baffled demon, Fire!...

“Round the Aqueducts of story,

As the mists of Lethe throng,
Croton’s waves in all their glory
Troop in melody along.”

From his post on the sidewalk RoBards could hear snatches of the
speeches, bursts of song. He joined in the “nine hearty cheers for
the City of New York and perpetuity to the Croton Water” when the
Grand Marshal called for them.
Then the ceremonies were over and a cold collation was served in
the City Hall, with Croton water and lemonade, but no wine or
spirituous liquors. Patty sent the children home with her parents and
joined her husband at the feast.
Mayor Morris offered a toast to the Governor and he responded,
remarking that New York “but yesterday a dusty trading mart,” had
now “the pure mountain stream gushing through its streets and
sparkling in its squares. To the noble rivers with which it was
encircled by Nature, is now added the limpid stream brought hither
by Art, until in the words of the Roman poet, alike descriptive and
prophetic, her citizens exult,

“inter flumina nota

Et fontes sacros.”

The night was as brilliant as the day. All the places of public
amusement were crowded and at the Tabernacle a sacred concert
was given. The fair at Niblo’s was suffocatingly frequented, and the
fireworks were splendid. At Castle Garden there were fireworks and
a balloon ascension. The museums and hotels were brilliantly
illuminated; and at the Astor House seven hundred window lights
were hung.
The Common Council caused a silver medal to be struck in
commemoration of the occasion, showing on one side the reservoir
on Murray’s Hill, on the other a cross-section of the aqueduct. It
would savor of boasting, perhaps, to aver that this medal was the
ugliest in the history of medalurgy.
Better than all the fireworks of oratory or powder, more blithe than
all the brass music, the roar of cannon and the rattle of firearms, the
bunting and the glitter, was the sudden outburst of the fountains.
The water that had come running down from the Croton dam leaped
into the air and fell with a resounding uproar. It reveled in the light
and bloomed in gigantic blossoms whose frothy shapes hardly
changed, though the drops that made them were never for a
moment the same, but always a new throng that rushed up and
lapsed with a constant splashing and bubbling.
In the City Hall Park the Croton flung itself sixty feet in the air and
came back diamonds. Eighteen jets were so arranged that they
designed various figures, “The Maid of the Mist,” “The Croton
Plume,” “The Dome.” In Union Park there was a willow that wept
gleaming stars. In Harlem there was a geyser more than a hundred
feet tall. And the sunlight thrust rainbows in among the silvery
columns. At night colored fireworks made them uncanny with
glamor.
The people felt that the curses of thirst and plague and fire were
indeed banished forever. Time would blight this hope as it upsets all
other reckonings upon perfection, but for the moment hope
announced the millennium and everybody believed her.
By midnight the town was as weary as a boys’ school after a
holiday. When Patty and her husband reached home they found
Keith awake and waiting for them. Immy was asleep, her head
enarmed like a bird’s head curled under its wing. But Keith was
staring from his cot. His little eight-year-old head was athrob with
gigantic plans that made doorknobs of his eyes.
“Papa, I been thinkin’. You know when I was little I was going to
be the man who lights the street lamps; an’ ’en I was goin’ to be a
night watchman when I got grown up; an’ ’en I was goin’ to be a
lawyer like you are, and help you. But now I guess I’ll be a
nengineer an’ build waterworks an’ aqueducks an’ things like that—
like Uncle Harry did the Croton. And some day they’ll have a
percession for me, too. You just wait and see.”
There was no need for restraint of the laughter with which
oldsters mock youngsters’ dreams. That fatal reference to Chalender
wrung the lips of Patty and her husband with sardonic misery. They
had once been innocent, too, and they were still innocent in
ambition. It was life that made fun of them. What sport would it
make of their children?
 CHAPTER XXV

THE next morning RoBards was awake very betimes, driven from
needed sleep by an onslaught of terrors. A thousand little fiends
assailed him and bound him like Gulliver held fast with threads.
RoBards would never take anxiety lying down, but rose and fought
it. So now he broke the withes of remorse and prophetic frenzy and
met the future with defiance.
He took up the morning paper to make sure that yesterday’s
pageant had actually occurred. He glanced hastily through the pages
first to see if his own history had transpired. He half expected to
read some clamorous announcement of a mysterious body found in
an old house in Westchester near Robbin’s Mills.
There was no mention of such a discovery, and he read of the
immortal yesterday, “the most numerous and imposing procession
ever seen in any American city.”
The town had apparently solved its chief problem. His own had
just been posed. How long could he hope to escape discovery?
Perhaps the news was already out. Perhaps the jaded revelers
returning to Westchester had been met by Mrs. Lasher screaming
like a fury. Perhaps the house had caught fire and the cellar walls
had broken open with the heat and the collapse of the timbers, as
he had seen big warehouses during the Great Fire broken open like
crushed hickory nuts.
An unendurable need to make sure with his own eyes of the state
of affairs goaded him to action. He ran upstairs to tell Patty some lie
about the necessity for the trip. She was so heavenly asleep that he
could not break the spell. The children were asleep, too.
So he told Cuff to tell them that he had been called back to the
country.
 He had the luck to meet a cab and the driver had a good horse
that reached the City Hall Station of the New York and Harlem
Railroad just in time to catch a train North.
As the carriages rolled through Center and Broome Streets and up
the Bowery and on out through the mile-long cut and the quarter-
mile tunnel through solid basalt, RoBards blessed the men that
invented steam-engines, and the good souls who borrowed the
money and paid the good toilers to lay these rails of stout wood with
iron bands along the top. He blessed the men who ran that blessed
locomotive. A demon of haste inspired them and they reached at
times a rate well over twenty miles an hour. He covered the fourteen
miles to Williamsbridge in no time at all compared to stage speed;
and the fare was but a shilling! He had now only eighteen miles to
make by the old-fashioned means.
He was a little cruel to the horse he hired and spared the poor
hack neither uphill nor down. But then he was fiercelier lashed by his
own torment.
At last his home swung into view—benign, serene, secure. No
lightning, no fire, no storm had ripped open its walls. There was no
excitement visible except in the fluttering of of a few birds—or were
they belated leaves? The tulip tree stood up, awake, erect, the safe
trustee of the home.
When he passed the Lasher place, he was afraid to go fast lest his
guilt be implied in his haste. He let the galled jade jog. He even
turned and looked the Lasher hovel straight in the face. As the guilty
do, he stared it right in the eyes.
But Mrs. Lasher did not even turn to look at him. She was splitting
wood and her bony fleshless arms seemed to give the ax three
helves. Her head was simply an old sunbonnet. She was faceless,
blind and deaf to everything but work—an old woodpecker of a
woman hammering at a life that was hard and harsh. Yet it was not
quite satisfying to have her so stupid. It was not pleasant to
remember that Jud himself was notoriously worthless.
 Strange, that to assassinate a Cæsar or a Henry of Navarre, to put
a Socrates to the hemlock, was of a certain cruel nobility, but to
annihilate an imbecile infamous! It was like stepping on a toad in the
dark.
And this modern theory, that the insane and the criminal and the
witless were poor sick people to be sorry for, was disturbing. Once
the abnormal people had been accused of selling themselves to
devils, renting their bodies to hellish tenants, earning an everlasting
home in hell. But now it was the fashion to say that they were poor
souls whom fate had given only broken or incomplete machines to
work with, and that their punishment was a crime.
If it were true, then he had beaten to death a sick boy whose
fearful deed had been the fumbling of a dolt. Even if it were untrue,
he had sent a wicked youth to hell and Jud would now be frying and
shrieking somewhere under RoBards’ feet.
RoBards fell into such abysmal brooding that he did not notice
how the horse, a stranger to these roads, had turned into a lane and
was no longer advancing but browsing on autumnal fare, nibbling
with prehensile lip at an old rail. The horse himself was an imbecile
of his kind.
For a long while RoBards struggled with black thoughts, each
more dreadful than the other. He was like a man held at the bottom
of the sea by a slimy devilfish, with searing poison and cold fire in
the very touch of each writhing, enveloping arm.
He tore himself loose from all the arms at once with a wild
resolve, like an outcry:
“I’ll not think about it any longer! I’ll go mad if I do!”
He heard his own voice clattering across the fields, woke, looked
about, and felt lost before he realized that he was in one of his own
meadows.
He turned and backed the gig, and reached the highway again.
The farmer, Albeson, was waiting for him, laughing:
 “I seen you leave that old fool of a horse go his own sweet way,
so I knowed you was fig’erin’ out some old law-soot or other. I was
wonderin’ haow long you’d set there. Wall, it was a gre’t day yes’day,
wa’n’t it?”
RoBards could laugh with the farmer heartily, for it showed how
innocent his reverie looked to a witness; it showed that Albeson had
not discovered anything amiss about the home.
He breathed elixir in the air and drove on to the house, finding it
as always a mirror to his humor. It had been in turn an ancestral
temple, a refuge from plague, a nuptial bower, a shelter for intrigue,
a whited sepulcher. The tree had been a priest, a hypocrite, and now
a faithful sentinel.
He was brought down again when Mrs. Albeson met him with a
query: “How’s pore little Immy?”
She whispered, though there was no one else in the house.
“Mis’ Lasher has been takin’ on terrible along of her boy Jud
lightin’ out for sea. Pity you let him live, for they do say a man
what’s borned to be hung won’t never git drownded.”
This was an exquisite plight: to be blamed for sparing the life he
had already taken. But he dared not give the noisy woman more of
his confidence. Immy’s fate was enough in her power.
He dared not visit the cellar till the farmers had gone to bed, and
then he went down into it as into a grave. It was morbidly cold and
the lamp shivered in his hand.
He found everything as he had left it, and marveled at the
neatness of his work. Yet it seemed not to be his work, but the work
of somebody who had borrowed his frame and used his scholarship
for cunning purposes.
He went back to the library. In this room his soul had found its
world. But now it was an impossible place. The hearthstone there—
Chalender had brought it—it was a headstone over a buried honor.
He had often resolved to tear it out and break it to dust. But now it
covered Jud Lasher, and served him as an anonymous memorial.
What was the quicklime doing down inside there? His heart
stopped. Perhaps it would not work sealed away from the air. He
ought to open the walls and see.
And this set him to trembling in utter confusion, for he recognized
in his own bewilderment the unintelligent maudlin reasoning of the
criminal.
Already he had revisited the scene; already debated an
exhumation; already longed to talk to someone, to boast perhaps.
He was afraid to trust himself to the house, and, making an
excuse of having come for some books and papers, set off again for
the city.
When he got down from the cab in front of his home he found
Keith in the bit of front yard. The boy was so absorbed in his task
that he greeted his father absently, as if RoBards were the child and
he the old one. He had dug a shallow channel from the hydrant to
the iron railing, and was laying down pipes of tin and cardboard and
any other rubbish he could find.
“I’m buildin’ an aqueduck from our house to London,” he
explained. “London got burned down once and so the king has sent
for me to get him some water right away, so’s the folks won’t get
burned up again. They’re goin’ to give me a big immense parade
and I’m goin’ to ride in a gold barouche like Uncle Harry did.”
RoBards managed a wry smile and went in. Patty met him with an
ancient look of woe and motioned him into the drawing room. She
spoke in a voice like ashes stirred with a cold wind.
“Immy told me,” she began and dropped into a chair sobbing.
“She didn’t mean to, but she screamed again at nothing and let slip
a word or two, and I got it out of her. She has cried herself sick with
remorse at disobeying you. How could you let that monster live?
How could you?”
 “He’s dead,” RoBards sighed, and sank on an ottoman, crushed
with weariness.
But Patty was startled to new life. She demanded the whole truth,
and he told her in a dreary, matter-of-fact tone. He told her
everything, including the secret of Jud’s resting place.
The story came from him with the anguish of dragging a sharp
chicken bone from his throat. It cut and left a bleeding and an ache,
but it was wonderful to be free of it.
Patty listened with awe, wide-eyed and panting. There was such
need of being close together under the ruins of their life, that, since
he could not find strength to lift his head or a hand, she leaned
forward toward him till she fell on her knees to the floor and
agonized across the space between them and, creeping close into
his bosom, drew his arms about her, and wept and wept—with him.
Their only words were “oh!” and “oh!” eternally repeated, yet they
felt that only now were their souls made one in a marriage of grief.
They had no bodies; they were mere souls crushed under the
broken temple of their hopes, bruised and wounded and pinioned
together in their despair.
Yet there was a kind of pitiful happiness in groping and finding
each other thus, and a bitter ecstasy in being able to love and be
loved utterly at last.
 CHAPTER XXVI

THEREAFTER Patty and RoBards felt a need of keeping close. They

slept together after that, her throat across his left arm. She called it
“my arm,” and when his travels to distant courts took him away from
her, that arm of “hers” was lonely.
Like galls that torment old trees for a while but grow at last into
their structures, the secrets that began as cancers became a part of
the hard gnarled bark that people and trees acquire or perish. The
RoBards home was being held together by misfortunes as much as
affection. The longing for utterance that makes secrets dangerous
was satisfied by common possession. Patty and her husband knew
the worst of each other, and their children, and they made league
against the world’s curiosity.
She was insatiably curious about the secrets of other homes while
protecting her own, but this was hardly so much from malice as from
a longing to feel that other people had as much to conceal as she.
The children had talked the thing over with their parents and the
strain was taken from their minds. Immy less often slashed the
silence with those shrieks of hers. She and Keith were busy growing
up and playing in the toyshop of new experiences.
RoBards tried lawsuits with fair success, and his fees were liberal;
he often secured fifty dollars for a case requiring no more than two
or three days in court. His house rent was six hundred dollars a year,
and his office rent and clerical expenses took another five hundred.
This left enough to give Patty and the children all the necessary
comforts, including two hired women, though most of these were
ignorant, impudent, and brief of stay, even though their wages had
gradually trebled until some of them were demanding as high as two
dollars a week.
 While RoBards practiced the law, Patty visited the shops and the
gossip marts, went to church, and indulged in modest extravagances
of finance, scandal, and faith.
The baby grew and another came, and went; but Patty never
became quite matronly. She took fierce care of her figure, lacing
herself to the verge of suffocation and trying all the complexion
waters advertised.
Patty was the very weather-vane of the fashion-winds. She was
not one of the increasing class of women who boldly invaded the
realms of literature and politics; her battlefield was amusement. She
was one of those of whom a writer in the New York Review said:
“The quiet of domestic life has been lost in this stirring age; nothing
will satisfy but action, notoriety, and distinction.”
Like all the other women, who could (or could not) afford it, Patty
dressed in the brightest of colors and flaunted coquetry in her
fabrics. Visitors from overseas commented on the embarrassments
they had encountered from mistaking the most respectable American
wives for courtesans because of their gaudy street dress, their
excessive powder, their false hair, and their freedom from escort.
The chief cross in her life and her husband’s was the burden of
her parents’ company. They were not interested in modern heresies
and manners, found them disgusting. Patty was bored to frenzy by
their tales of the good old times of their memory.
The old man grew increasingly impatient of the law’s delay. He
had less and less time to spend on earth, and that two hundred
thousand dollars the city owed him grew more and more important.
It seemed impossible, however, to speed the courts. One or two
similar suits against the city on account of buildings similarly blown
up to check the fire of 1835 were won by the city, and RoBards
dreaded the outcome of his father-in-law’s claim. He dreaded the
loss of the vast sum at stake even less than the effect of the loss on
Mr. Jessamine’s sanity.
 The fire had died out and its ravages were overbuilt for ten years
before the case drew up to the head of the docket at last. As Mr.
Jessamine grew more and more frantic, he felt less and less
confident of his son-in-law’s ability to win the action. He insisted
upon the hiring of additional counsel and cruelly wounded RoBards
by his frank mistrust. But he could not make up his mind what
lawyer to employ, and since he was out of funds, he must depend on
his son-in-law to advance the fee for his own humiliation.
Patty herself was zealous for the splendor that two hundred
thousand dollars would add to the establishment which she found all
too plain in spite of her husband’s indulgence. And she shamed him
woefully by her lack of confidence. She saw his hurt and added
exquisiteness to it by constantly saying:
“Of course, I think my Mist’ RoBards is the finest lawyer in the
world, but can the judges be relied on to appreciate you?”
Lying on his arm she would waken him from slumbers just begun
by crooning:
“Two hundred thousand dollars! Think of it! Papa and Mamma are
too old to spend it, so we should have the benefit. I’d buy you a
yacht so that you could join the new club, and I’d buy myself—what
wouldn’t I buy myself!”
“First catch your cash, my dear,” RoBards would mumble, and try
in vain to drown himself in a pool of sleep that would not accept
him, though Patty sank away to blissful depths of oblivion.

One hot July New York daybreak had just begun to annoy his
unrested eyes when the fire bells broke out. He had promised
himself and Patty long ago to resign from his company, but a sense
of civic duty had kept him in the ranks.
 Patty slept so well among her visions of wealth that she did not
heed when he withdrew his arm from under her head, nor hear him
getting into his uniform.
Remembering the icy December night of the disaster of 1835, he
rejoiced in the absence of wind and the plentitude of the Croton
water. Neptune would soon prevail over his enemy element, as in the
banners of the parade.
The Fire Kings, who had been frost-nipped on that other night,
were dripping with sweat this morning when they drew near the
origin of the fire in a New Street warehouse. This contained a great
mass of stored saltpeter, and it exploded just as the Fire Kings
coupled up their hose. The world rocked about them. Buildings went
over as if an earthquake had rattled the island. The glass of a
thousand windows rang and snapped and the air rained blocks of
granite, timbers and chimneys.
Two of the Fire Kings were struck dead at RoBards’ side, and he
was bruised and knocked down. The whole fire army was put to rout
and the flames bounding in all directions were soon devouring a
hundred and fifty buildings at once, most of them new structures
that had risen in the ashes of 1835.
Once more the fear of doom fell upon the city, but after three
hundred and sixty-five of the city’s most important buildings were
piled in embers, the Croton came to the rescue.
Once more the heart of the city’s commerce was eaten out. Again
the insurance companies went bankrupt in the hour they had
assumed to provide against. Once more financial dismay shook the
stout frame of the town.
Yet carpenters and masons were at work before the ruins ceased
to smoke, though they had to wear gloves to protect them from
brick and stone too hot to be touched with naked hands.
When RoBards came home after the fire, Patty was still blessedly
asleep. She woke with a little cry of petulance when his helmet fell
from his bruised hand as he lifted it from his bleeding forehead and
dropped sickly into a chair. But when she saw how hurt he was, she
was at his side in an instant, hurrying like a slipperless Oceanid to
comfort him. The battered hero’s wounds were made worth while
when they brought the delicate ministrations of the barefoot nymph
in the flying white gown, so thin that it seemed to blush wherever it
touched the flesh beneath. Patty looked all the bonnier for the panic
that left her nightcap askew upon the array of curl papers bordering
her anxious brow.
And the fire had another benefit. It brought to old Jessamine the
first grin of genuine contentment RoBards had seen on his twisted
lips since 1835. For the old wretch chuckled to realize that many a
wealthy merchant whose carriage dust he had had to take afoot for
ten years was now brought down to his own miserable level.
If only he could drag his two hundred thousand out of the city, he
that had been poor among the rich, would be rich among the poor.
That would be repayment with usury.
He could hardly endure to await the day when he should regain
his glory, and he smothered Patty when she brought home the
inspiration that promised to hasten his triumph.
She brought it home from a party, from a dinner so fashionable
that it was not begun until seven o’clock. In only a few years the
correct hour had been shoved further and further down the day from
three o’clock in the afternoon until deep into the evening. At the
same time the fashionable residence district had pushed out into the
country until it was necessary for the RoBards’ hired carriage to
travel for this occasion out Hudson Street for two miles to Ninth
Avenue and nearly a mile more to Twenty-eighth Street. And Patty
laughed into his ear:
“It’s nice to be bound for the North Pole on so hot a night.”
She was blissful as a new queen in her peculiarly lustrous dress of
peach-blossom silk.
RoBards marveled at the perverse heroism with which she and
other women endured these martyrdoms to vanity. He had ridiculed
Patty’s devotion to tight stays for years, with the usual effect of male
counsel on female conduct. She was not likely to yield to a
husband’s satires, since her sex had mocked at similar opinion since
the beginning of the world. Preachers had denounced corsets in
vain; the word was not considered decent, but a man may say
anything across a pulpit. Physicians had uttered warnings in private
and public. They had traced all the evils of modern infirmity to
corsets; but their patients groaned and persevered. Anatomists
described the distorted livers and lungs of ladies they found in post-
mortems—in vain.
King Joseph II. had forbidden stays in orphan schools and
convents and had put them on female convicts, in the hope of
diminishing their prestige, but the women went their sweet way with
secret laughter.
When RoBards quoted the parsons against the corsets, Patty
answered:
“If God didn’t want women to wear corsets, why did he fill the
seas with whales and fill the whales with whalebone? What else is it
good for?”
Heaven was an appellate court that RoBards did not practice in,
and he dropped the case.
To-night he had watched Patty devoting half an hour of anguish to
the throttling of her waist. She slept in “night stays” now to make
the daytime constriction easier, but the new peach blossom silk had
demanded too much—or too little.
After three efforts to pull the strings to the necessary tightness,
she had sunk into a chair, bathed in sweat, pleading for help. And
RoBards was so sorry for her that he actually put his strength to the
infamous task of lacing his own wife into an impossible cone. But
she thanked him for the torture and pirouetted before her mirror in
rapture.
And now in the carriage, though she could hardly sit up straight,
she was so happy that RoBards, delighting in anything that could
delight her, leaned near to press his lips against her cheek.
She was the mother of a long family, yet she was still a girl, and a
girl by virtue—or by vice—of avoiding the penalties of growing up.
Her extravagances, her flippancies, her very determination to evade
the burdens of grief and responsibility, her refusal to be in earnest
about anything but beauty, were, after all, the only means of
keeping beauty.
At such moments, he felt that she and her sort alone were wise;
and that those who bent to the yoke of life were not the wise and
noble creatures they thought themselves, but only stolid, sexless,
stupid oxen. She still had wings because she used them always, was
always fugitive.
At this bright dinner there were many eminent women among the
eminent men in the drawing room. There were two mayors, Mr.
Havemeyer, newly elected, and Mr. Harper, of the Native American
Party, who had failed of re-election but had won the city’s gratitude
by discarding the old night watchman system of “Leatherheads” for
a police force of eight hundred men in uniform—and none too many
in view of the prevalence of all manner of crime.
Commodore Stevens of the new yacht club was there; also Mr. A.
T. Stewart, who was building a great store in Broadway, and sealing
its doom as a street of homes.
A picturesque guest was Mrs. Anne Cora Mowatt, who had written
a successful play called “Fashion,” though she had never been
behind the scenes, and who had followed it up by becoming an
actress and playing “The Lady of Lyons” after one rehearsal. And she
had triumphed! This was a new way for a woman to repair her
broken fortunes.
Across from her and somewhat terrified by the situation was the
Rev. Dr. Chirnside, who abhorred the playhouse and never failed to
view with alarm the fact that New York already had eight theatres
and that they were rebuilt as fast as they burned down—which was
pretty fast. Against these there were only a hundred and sixty
churches, including nine African, six Catholic churches and four
synagogues.
RoBards’ heart lurched as always when he saw Harry Chalender in
the drawing room. He heard him saying:
“They tell me that the number of theatres in town has not
increased in years, though the churches have tripled in number. Yet
crime has mightily increased. How do you explain that?”
“You are flippant, sir!” said Dr. Chirnside.
When Patty made her entrance, swimming in like a mermaid
waist-deep in a peach-blossom billow, all the babble stopped. All the
eyes rolled her way. Her husband following her, slim, black, and
solemn, felt a mere lackey, and yet was proud to lag at heel of such
a vision.
His pride sickened and his heart lurched when he saw Harry
Chalender push forward and lift her hand to his lips. RoBards had
once seen those lips on his wife’s mouth, and he felt now that he
ought in common decency to crush them both to death.
But, of course, he did not even frown when he shook Chalender’s
hand. After all, Chalender had saved his life once—that black night in
the fire of 1835, and he felt a twisted obligation.
Another twisted emotion was his delight when he saw Chalender
crowded away from Patty by other men. He felt that a man ought
either to cage his wife in a cell or give up all respectable ideas of
monopoly or monogamy. One might as well accept these insane
notions of women’s rights to their own souls. And with the souls
would go the bodies, of course. And then the home, the family,
society, the nation were lost. He could not imagine the chaos that
would ensue. His own heart was a seething chaos in little.
And then all the men were eclipsed by the entrance of Daniel
Webster—no less a giant than Daniel Webster. As a citizen RoBards
felt an awe for him; as a lawyer, a reverence.
 Patty gasped with pride at meeting the man. She bowed so low
that she almost sat on the floor. And Webster, looking down on her,
bent till his vast skull was almost on a level with Patty’s little china-
doll head.
Her humility was such a pretty tribute to his genius that his
confusion was perfect. His mastiff jaws wagged with the shock of
her grace. His huge eyes saddened in a distress of homage. For once
he could find no words. There was only a groan of contentment in
that columnar throat, equally famous for its thirst and for the
eloquence of the angelic voice that stormed the senate chamber and
shook the judicial benches, yet purled like a brook at a female ear.
Patty almost swooned when she learned that she was to go out on
Webster’s arm.
When the black servants folded back the doors, a table like a lake
of mahogany waited them, gleaming with a flotilla of heavily laden
silver, platters, tureens, baskets, and bowls in a triple line.
Patty and the leonine Daniel followed the lady of the mansion, and
when she was formally handed to her throne, the clatter began. The
servants fairly rained food upon the guests, soup and fish and ham
and turkey, venison and mutton, corn and all the vegetables
available, sweets of every savor, cheeses and fruits, claret and
champagne and a dulcet Madeira brought down from the attic where
it had spent its years swinging from the heat of the sun-baked roof
to the chill of the long winters.
RoBards noted that many of his old schoolmates, still boys in his
eye, were far older than Patty had allowed him to be. And their
wives were as shapeless as the haunches of meat whose slices they
attacked without grace. Patty made a religion of little manners and
charming affectations. She took off her gloves with caressing upward
strokes and folded them under her napkin. She sipped her soup with
a birdlike mincing that was beyond cavil.
And when Mr. Webster, with old-fashioned courtesy, challenged
her to champagne, she accepted the challenge, selecting the wine
he named, held her glass to be filled, and while the bubbles tumbled
and foamed to the brim and broke over it in a tiny spray, she looked
into the monstrous eyes of the modern Demosthenes, and with the
silent eloquence of her smile, nullified the ponderous phrases he
would have rolled upon her.
He found his voice later, but RoBards could hear Patty’s voice now
and then, tinkling like raindrops between thunders. And finally he
heard her murmur in little gasps:
“Oh, Mr. Senator!—if only you—you!—would take my father’s case
—against this wicked, wicked city—then—justice would be done—at
last—for once at least.”
A faintness, less of jealousy than despair, made RoBards put down
his Madeira glass so sharply that a blotch of the wine darkened the
linen of the cloth. He set the glass above the stain lest the hostess
see him and want to murder him. And this blunder completed his
misery.
But Patty stared up into Webster’s eyes as if she had never seen a
man before.
By this time Mr. Webster was well toward the befuddlement for
which he was noted, and his reply was more fervent than elegant:
“My dear, ’f you want my assisshance in your father’s—your
father’s lawsuit, I shall consider it a prilivege, a glorious pril—
op’tunity to pay homage to one of mos’ beau’iful wom’n, one of mos’
charming—Madam, I shallenge you to champ—champagne.”
Patty went through the rites again, but put her hand across the
glass when the servant would have refilled it. She finished her
dessert, and deftly resumed her gloves before the hostess threw
down her napkin and rose to lead the ladies to the dressing room.
Patty, for all her accepted challenges, was one of the few women
who made the door without a waver.
Her husband followed her with his eyes and longed to go with her
and unpack his heart of the grudge it held. In his very presence she
had asked another lawyer to supply the ability she denied him. But
he had to stay and watch with disgust the long tippling and prattling
and male gossip.
A few of the men told stories of excellent spice, but some were as
loathsome to his mood as one of the worm-eaten walnuts that he bit
into before he realized its estate. He had no stomach for Harry
Chalender’s gabble, and found nothing but impudence and bad taste
in the problem Chalender posed to poor old Dr. Chirnside. Harry said
that he had made a ghastly mistake. In talking to a well-bred young
female who had snubbed him for insulting her by offering to help her
on with her shawl, he had somehow let slip the obscene word,
“corsets.” The young lady pretended not to have understood, but
blenched in silence.
An old lady who overheard him, however, told him that she was
old enough to advise him to apologize for the slip. He promised
rashly, but was at his wit’s end for the procedure.
“I appeal to you, Dr. Chirnside,” he said, “for spiritual help. How
shall I apologize to that young gazelle for using the word ‘corsets’ in
her presence—without once more using the word ‘corsets’ in her
presence?”
Dr. Chirnside took refuge in offended dignity, stated that a word
unfit for the female ear was equally unfit for the ear of a gentleman.
He choked on a last gulp of port, and moved to the drawing room
with more rectitude in his head than his legs.
Chalender was rebuked by a solemn gentleman who regretted the
increasing indelicacy of manners. If women’s innocence were not
protected where would human society look for safety?
“My wife had a most shocking experience recently,” he said. “We
sent our daughter to Mrs. Willard’s school at Troy and what do you
suppose they taught that poor child, sir? I should not have believed
it if my wife had not told me. She could never have believed it if she
had not seen it with her own eyes.
 “A woman teacher, a most unwomanly teacher, drew on a
blackboard, sir, pictures of the internal organs of women, the heart,
the arteries, and the veins! Yes, sir, by God, sir, she did! My wife and
several mothers who chanced to be visiting the classroom rose in
their indignation and left the room. They were too shocked to
command their daughters to violate the discipline of the school. But
I shall withdraw my daughter from such precincts, I assure you. Is
nothing to be sacred? Is everything to be spoken of openly in these
atheistic times? I ask you, sir, I ask you!”
Chalender winked at RoBards while the old gentleman’s tears of
wrath salted his port. Chalender wailed, “But nobody tells me how to
apologize for saying corsets.” He was incorrigible.
RoBards felt that his own predicament was as silly as Chalender’s,
yet it was of equal torment. How could he rid himself of Mr.
Webster? How could he endure his ponderous association?
The giant grew less and less awesome as he absorbed more and
more liquor. RoBards began to hope that all memory of his pledge to
Patty might be lost in the enormous ache which that enormous head
would feel the next morning.
It was not.
On the next morning, Patty received a note from the Astor House
where Mr. Webster lived when in New York. She took it to her father
with a cry of pride:
“See, papa, what I’ve brought you, Mr. Webster’s head on a
platter.”
All that RoBards could say in self-defense was a rather petty
sarcasm: “I hope that Mr. Webster doesn’t do for you what he did
not long ago: he drank so much that he tried the wrong side of the
case.”
Patty snapped back at him: “Yes, but before he sat down,
someone told him of his mistake, and he went right on and
answered all his own arguments—and won for his client: as he will
for Papa.”
“I hope so,” RoBards groaned, wondering if he really hoped so.
Old Jessamine was so sure now of his two hundred thousand
dollars that he decided to spend more of it in making doubly sure.
He would engage the next best lawyer in America, Benjamin F.
Butler.
“With Webster and Butler as my counsel,” he roared, “I’ll make
even this old city pay its honest debts.”
RoBards’ head drooped as he noted that his own name was not
even mentioned, though he had fought the case for ten years at his
own expense and must instruct the two Titans in all its details.
He felt a little meaner than ever when Patty noted his shameful
distress and said:
“Don’t forget, papa, that you have also the distinguished
assistance of the eminent Mr. David RoBards.”
“Umm—ah—yes! Yes, yes, of course, of course!”
But lesser alarms were lost in greater. And when RoBards went to
the post office he found there a letter from his farmer:
Mr. D. RoBards esqe.
Las nite in the big storm here youre chimbley was strok by litening
and the seller wall all broke wat shall I do about it or will you get a
mason from the sitty with respects as ever youre obed. servt.
J. Albeson
P S. Too cows was also strok by litening and a toolup tree.
J. A.
The letter was itself a lightning stroke in RoBards’ peace. Time
and security had almost walled up Jud Lasher’s memory in oblivion.
And now he seemed to see the body disclosed by a thunderbolt from
heaven splitting apart the stones to show it grinning and malevolent.
 After the first shock he realized that the body could not have been
revealed or Albeson would have mentioned it. This gave him one
deep breath of relief.
Then fear took the reins and made his heart gallop anew; for how
could he expect a mason to repair the walls without tearing deep
into the foundation of the chimney?
 CHAPTER XXVII

THE mystery and terror of the sky-flung thunder were restored to

their old power over RoBards’ soul by the news from Tuliptree Farm.
The lightning had suffered a distinct loss of social prestige when
Ben Franklin coaxed it out of the clouds with a kite-string and
crowded it into a pickle jar. Its immemorial religious standing had
been practically destroyed. To complete its humiliation from the
estate of divine missile, Professor Morse had recently set it to
carrying messages, writing dots and dashes, and racing back and
forth along a wire like a retriever.
But now again it took the form of God’s great index finger thrust
from the heavens to point out the deed too safely buried in the walls
of RoBards’ home.
He could have wished that Professor Morse’s lightning might have
brought him instant news of the actual appearance of the shattered
chimney. There was a wire all the way between New York and
Philadelphia, but the far-writer had not been extended north as yet.
So RoBards must take the train. Fortunately the New York and
Harlem Railroad had already reached White Plains, and he had only
five miles more to ride on a horse of flesh and blood. His eyes
scanned the horizon fiercely, and his heart beat with such a
criminal’s anxiety that he would almost have welcomed the exposure
of his crime—if crime it were.
The first thing that topped his horizon was the great tulip tree
overtowering the house. Its lofty plume was untarnished. Some
other tree, then, must have been blasted. Next, the roof-line rose to
view. It looked strange with the chimney gone.
As the road curved in its approach, he saw where the brick were
torn away, the clapboards singed with the streaked fire, and the
foundation stones ripped open.
The farmer met him at the gate with cordial homage and a crude
buffoonery more pleasant to his ear than the most elegant epigram,
since it proved him still ignorant of what the walls contained.
“Thar lays your chimbley, Mr. RoBards,” he said, “jest as the Lord
left her. I ain’t teched e’er a brick, and I told the wife not to heave
none of ’em at me when she lost her temper—so to speak, seein’ as
she don’t seem to have ever found it, haw haw haw!”
“He will have his joke!” Mrs. Albeson tittered.
“A sense of humor certainly helps you through the world,” said her
husband as he took the horse in charge. Mrs. Albeson waddled after
RoBards, and checked him to murmur:
“Haow’s pore little Immy?”
That eternal reminder hurt him sore. She startled him by adding,
“Old Mis’ Lasher keeps hangin’ about. More trouble! One of her girls
has ran away with a hired man from the city, and she’s more lost
than the boy that’s went a-whalin’. Mis’ Lasher prob’ly seen you drive
past and she’ll likely be along any minute naow.”
“Yes, yes; very well; all right,” said RoBards, impatient to be alone.
And Mrs. Albeson went back to her kitchen, taking her snub
patiently.
RoBards studied the course of the thunderbolt and was glad that
he had not been present to see it smite and hear it. He would
probably have died of fear. He shivered now with the bare
imagination, and cravenly wondered if any thrill of it could have
stirred Jud Lasher.
He was so absorbed in this fantasy that he jumped when Albeson
spoke across his shoulder:
“Looks like to me, the mason would have to pull the whole thing
daown, shore up the walls, dig out the foundation, and set her up all
over again!”