ryman had smiled at
his sentimentality. The shutters closed and all was dark, but Dave
continued to think and smoke far into the night.

The days slipped by in pleasant and even tenor. The summer burned
itself out in a riot of glorious colors, the harvest was gathered in,
and the ripe apples fell from the trees--and there was a wail of coming
winter to the night wind. Anna Moore had made her place in the
Bartlett family. The Squire could not imagine how he ever got along
without her; she always thought of everyone's comfort and remembered
their little individual likes and dislikes, till the whole household
grew to depend on her.

But she never spoke of herself nor referred to her family, friends or
manner of living, before coming to the Bartlett farm.

When she had first come among them, her beauty had caused a little
ripple of excitement among the neighbors; the young men, in particular,
were all anxious to take her to husking bees and quilting parties, but
she always had some excellent excuse for not going, and while her
refusals were offered with the utmost kindness, there was a quiet
dignity about the girl that made any attempt at rustic playfulness or
familiarity impossible.

Sanderson came to the house from time to time, but Anna treated him
precisely as she would have treated any other young man who came to the
Squire's. She was the family "help," her duty stopped in announcing
the guests--or sometimes, and then she felt that fate had been
particularly cruel--in waiting on him at table.

Once or twice when Sanderson had found her alone, he had attempted to
speak to her. But she silenced him with a look that seat him away
cowering like a whipped cur. If he had any interest in any member of
the Squire's family, Anna did not notice it. He was an ugly scar on
her memory, and when not actually in his presence she tried to forget
that he lived.

CHAPTER XII.

KATE BREWSTER HOLDS SANDERSON'S ATTENTION.

"A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch
Incapable of pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy."--_Shakespeare_.

It was perhaps owing to the fact that Anna strove hourly to eliminate
the memory of Lennox Sanderson from her life, that she remained wholly
unaware of that which every member of the Squire's household was
beginning to notice: namely, that Lennox Sanderson was becoming daily
more attentive to Kate Brewster.

She had more than once hazarded a guess on why a man of Sanderso