s by
unforeseen circumstances. A load of responsibility rested upon his
shoulders, to which at times he felt himself barely equal, and which
men of less tough fibre would have been glad to shift upon others.
Naturally, his daily cares made his hours of relaxation all the more
pleasant Mrs. Barholm's influence upon him was a gentle and soothing
one, and in Anice he found a subtle inspiration. She seemed to
understand his trials by instinct, and even the minutiae of his work
made themselves curiously clear to her. As to the people who were under
his control, she was never tired of hearing of them, and of
studying their quaint, rough ways. To please her he stored up many a
characteristic incident, and it was through him that she heard most
frequently of Joan. She did not even see Joan for fully two months after
her arrival in Riggan, and then it was Joan who came to her.

As the weather became more spring-like she was oftener out in the
garden. She found a great deal to do among the flower-beds and
shrubbery, and as this had always been considered her department, she
took the management of affairs wholly into her own hands. The old place,
which had been rather neglected in the time of the previous inhabitant,
began to bloom out into fragrant luxuriance, and passing Rigganites
regarded it with admiring eyes. The colliers who had noticed her at the
window in the colder weather, seeing her so frequently from a nearer
point of view, felt themselves on more familiar terms. Some of them even
took a sort of liking to her, and gave her an uncouth greeting as they
went by; and, more than once, one or another of them had paused to ask
for a flower or two, and had received them with a curious bashful awe,
when they had been passed over the holly hedge.

Having gone out one evening after dinner to gather flowers for the
house, Anice, standing before a high lilac bush, and pulling its pale
purple tassels, became suddenly conscious that some one was watching
her--some one standing upon the roadside behind the holly hedge. She did
not know that as she stopped here and there to fill her basket, she
had been singing to herself in a low tone. Her voice had attracted the
passer-by.

This passer-by--a tall pit girl with a handsome, resolute face--stood
behind the dark green hedge, and watched her. Perhaps to this girl,
weary with her day's labor, grimed with coal-dust, it was not unlike
standing outside paradise. Early in the year as it wa