udly that
when I needed help I must come to them. Poor Hendry! It wasn't long
before he did need help; but could you imagine him taking it from any
one? He lost the school--he had become not quite orthodox in his ideas
and was inclined to rail at church doctrine. He never was intended for
manual labor; he worked hard when he could get work, but everything
seemed against him. Then Penelope came, and he was left alone with
her, and it made him bitter. I tried to get him to come to me; but
could you imagine a man as proud as he, David--a man of his
mind--coming to me after what had happened! Why, he called my offer
charity. Then he left the valley, too, and I wrote to him from
Pittsburgh, where I had bought a little mill. I wanted them to come to
me--him and Penelope--for I was lonely. I had nothing but the mill;
why, only in the mill was I happy. But could you imagine a man as
proud as he, David, taking help from me? He answered rather curtly;
said that some day I should see what he was worth; that he was not the
idler he seemed. He said that again to me face to face, that once when
I have seen him in all the years since the break."

Rufus Blight left his chair and stood by the fireplace, a hand on the
mantel, his eyes watching the flames.

"Could I have done more, David? That night when I saw him I had come
in from the mills late, and the servants would not let him wait for me
even in the hall. He told me how he had shot the constable. He feared
he had killed him, but he did not know, not daring to turn back to find
out. He had walked the whole way, travelling day and night. I wanted
him to stay, but he said that in Mary he had taken from me everything I
had ever had; he could take no more. He had come not to beg, but to
give me Penelope; and when he came again it would not be as a brother
who could be turned from my door by the servants; when he came again it
would be as a father of whom Penelope could feel no shame. I could not
move him. I did my best, David, but he laughed and slapped me on the
back and called me his old grub; said that some day I should really see
what was in him. Then he went away--God only knows where."

"To the West," said I. "To the East, to Tibet."

"Yes," said Rufus Blight. He was standing before me, his hands clasped
behind him, his eyes intent on the ceiling.

"And you came to us for Penelope," I said. The last trace of my
antipathy to this man, once to me so fat