ble; at least, then, he would not have wholly made her
so.

"I had some matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down
before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where
the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of
the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the
face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him,
he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the
morning, and I still have some things to put in shape."

"Is there any trouble there?" the girl asked from the place she had
resumed. She held by one hand from the corner of the mantel, and let her
head droop over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her extraordinary
beauty, as a stranger might have had.

"Trouble?" he echoed.

"With the hands."

"Oh, no; nothing of that sort. What made you think so?" asked Northwick,
rapidly exploring the perspective opened up in his mind by her question,
to see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. He found an
instant's relief in figuring himself called to the mills by a labor
trouble.

"That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going about circulating all
sorts of reports."

"There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike will affect us," said
Northwick. "But I think I had better be on the ground."

"I should think you could leave it to the Superintendent," said the
girl, "without wearing your own life out about it."

"I suppose I might," said Northwick, with an effect of refusing to
acquire merit by his behavior, "but the older hands all know me so well,
that--"

He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and the elder daughter
said: "He is on one of his sprees again. I should think something ought
to be done about him, for his family's sake, if nothing else. Elbridge
told James that you almost drove over him, coming up."

"Yes," said Northwick. "I didn't see him until he started up under the
horses' feet."

"He will get killed, some of these days," said Adeline, with the sort of
awful satisfaction in realizing a catastrophe, which delicate women
often feel.

"It would be the best thing for him," said her sister, "and for his
family, too. When a man is nothing but a burden and a disgrace to
himself and everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon as
possible."

Northwick sat looking into his daughter's beautiful face, but he saw the
inflamed and heate