I thought that here a woman
could render some measure of help, and as he turned from
talking to me I began to empty out the boxes that were
ready and stack them again on the pile. I had not yet
turned out ten bricks when he saw me, and paused in his
melancholy work.

"'Stop that!' he cried, and scrambled out of the spruit to
where I stood. 'I suppose,' he went on, 'you would like
your father to know that I had suffered you to work for me
like a Kafir.'

"'Kornel!' I cried in horror.

"But he was white on the cheek-bones and breathing hard,
and I could not soften him.

"'Rich man's daughter or poor man's wife,' he said, 'you
are white, and must keep your station. It is my business to
sell myself, not yours. Get you back to the house I have
given you, and stay there.'

"And with that he picked up the soft bricks I had turned
for him, and threw them one by one into the spruit.

"'Poverty and meanness and all,' he added, 'it shall not be
said at your father's house that you worked for me. Nor
that you lacked aught it became you to have, neither,' he
added, with a quick heat of temper. 'Get to your house.'

"I slunk off, crying like a child, while he went back to
the mud--and the labor.

"Next day came Pagan to pay for the work that was done. He
drove up in his smart cart, and tiptoed his way daintily to
the edge of the spruit where the bricks lay. He was an old
man, very cleanly dressed, with hard white hair on his head
and face, and a quick manner of looking from side to side
like a little bird. In all his aspect there was nothing but
spoke of easy wealth and the serenity of a well-ordered
life; there was even that unkindly sharpness of tone and
manner that is a dead-weight on the well-to-do. My husband
was at work when he drove up, but he straightened his back,
squared his broad shoulders, and came up from the mud,
walking at the full of his height and smiling down at the
rich man with half-closed eyes.

"'Daag, Heer Pagan,' he said to him, in the tone of one who
needs and desires nothing, and held out his hand--mud from
the elbow--with something lordly in the gesture. The rich
man cocked his head quickly, in the way he had, and hung in
the breeching for a moment, ere he rendered his hand to
Kornel, with a reddening of the cheek above his white
whisker that betrayed him, I thought, for a paltry soul.

"'I've come to see your bricks,' he said curtly, 'and to
pay for 'em, if they're all right.'

"'Ah,