CHAPTER ONE
A MAN SAT IN THE DIM PARLOUR ADDING UP FIGURES
by the light of an oil lamp, but the wick began to
burn low, and his eyes were weak. He noticed that
it had grown cold, and through the chink of the
blind he could see light snow-flakes on the window-
pane. He stood up to look for a candle. When
he opened the cupboaid44^d was feeling on the top
shelf, a small book fell from it, He placed the
candle close beside his accounts. It was a little old
book. When he was a boy he had seen his father
using just such a one, writing down every evening
with his quill-pen what he had received and spent,
just as he himself now did every evening. He
opened it and read what was written on the inside
of the cover: " 19 January 1835." That was the
year of his birth. And beneath that, in faded ink,
but still legible, the words: " A child when it is
born is as white.as snow, but he who looks carefully
will see on the snow a red stain ; that is sin."
He seemed to hear his father saying it. From
his earliest years he had heard him speak of snow
and blood; it used to keep him awake at night,