ittering, choking over a mouthful of food before she could
attain gravity enough to answer.

"Lord! no; you do ask the funniest questions!"

Thus checked, I did not press for further information as to brother
Mason's vocation, but proceeded to satisfy my hunger, which was not
diminished by the unappetizing appearance of the food on the barrel.

It was a matter of great surprise to me to see how little Henrietta ate,
and I was likewise ashamed of my own voracious appetite. Henrietta
noticed this and frowned ominously.

"God! but you do eat!" she commented frankly, poising her knife in air.

"I'm hungry. I've worked hard to-day," I replied with dignity.

"Maybe you won't eat so much, though, after a while," she said
hopefully.

"Maybe not," I agreed. "But you, Henrietta--you are not eating
anything!"

"Me? Oh, I'm all right. I'm eating as much as I ever do. The works takes
away my hunger. If it didn't, I don't know how I'd get along. If I eat
as much as you, I'd be likely to starve to death. I couldn't make enough
to feed me. When I first begun to work in the factory I'd eat three or
four pieces of bread across the loaf, and potatoes and meat, and be
hungry for things besides; but after a while you get used to being
hungry for so long, you couldn't eat if you had it to eat."

"How long have you been working?" I ventured.

Henrietta put her cup on the table and shot a suspicious glance at me
before she answered:

"Oh, off and on, and for five or six years, ever since my uncle died. He
was my guardian--that's his house up there."

I looked in the direction of Henrietta's pointed finger to a cheap
chromolithograph that was tacked on the wall between the windows and
immediately over the barrel where we were eating. I recognized it at
once as a reproduction of a familiar scene showing a castle on the
Rhine. I had seen the same picture many times, once as a supplement with
a Sunday newspaper. That this stately pile of green and yellow
variegated stones should be the residence of Henrietta's uncle and
guardian seemed obviously but a bit of girlish fun, of a piece with her
earlier talk regarding her aristocratic ancestry; for by this time I had
construed that strange story into a hoax that was never meant to be
taken seriously.

But one glance now at Henrietta's face showed me my mistake. It was
plainly to be seen that she had come to believe every word of what she
had told me.

My eye had traveled to the row of