es, causing them to grow
so like their surroundings that even their enemies do not easily observe
them. This man, however, was not lacking in a certain wiry physical
strength, nor in power of thought or of will. And these latter powers,
if the girl possessed them, were as yet only latent in her, for she had
the heavy and undeveloped appearance of backward youth.

The man was speaking earnestly. At last he said:--

"Come now, Sissy, be a good lassie and say that ye're content to stay.
Ye've always been a good lassie and done what I told ye before."

His accent was Scotch, but not the broad Scotch of an entirely
uneducated man. There was sobriety written in the traits of his face,
and more--a certain quality of intellectual virtue of the higher stamp.
He was not young, but he was not yet old.

"I haven't," said the girl sullenly.

He sighed at her perverseness. "That's not the way I remember it. I'm
sure, from the time ye were quite a wee one, ye have always tried to
please me.--We all come short sometimes; the thing is, what we are
trying to do."

He spoke as if her antagonism to what he had been saying, to what he was
yet saying, had had a painful effect upon him which he was endeavouring
to hide.

The girl looked over his head at the smoke that was proceeding from the
log-house chimney. She saw it curl and wreathe itself against the cold
blue east. It was white wood smoke, and as she watched it began to turn
yellow in the light from the sunset. She did not turn to see whence the
yellow ray came.

"Now that father's dead, I won't stay here, Mr. Bates." She said "I
won't" just as a sullen, naughty girl would speak. "'Twas hateful enough
to stay while he lived, but now you and Miss Bates are nothing to me."

"Nothing to ye, Sissy?" The words seemed to come out of him in pained
surprise.

"I know you've brought me up, and taught me, and been far kinder to me
than father ever was; but I'm not to stay here all my life because of
_that_."

"Bairn, I have just been telling ye there is nothing else ye can do just
now. I have no ready money. Your father had nothing to leave ye but his
share of this place; and, so far, we've just got along year by year, and
that's all. I'll work it as well as I can, and, if ye like, ye're
welcome to live free and lay by your share year by year till ye have
something to take with ye and are old enough to go away. But if ye go
off now ye'll have to live as a servant, and ye couldn't t