ate and going over to the well for a drink.

"I wish they'd work more and sing less," said the Squire. "All this
singing business is too picturesque for me."

"They've about finished, father. I came for the money to pay them off."

It was characteristic of Dave to uphold the rights of the berry-pickers.
They were all friends of his, young men and women who sang in the village
choir and who went out among their neighbors' berry patches in summer,
and earned a little extra money in picking the fruit. The village
thought only the more of them for their thrift, and their singing at the
close of their work was generally regarded in the light of a favor.
Zeke, Sam, Cynthia and Amelia who formed the quartet, had all fine voices
and no social function for miles around Wakefield was complete without
their music.

The Squire said no more about the berry-pickers. Dave handed him a paper
on which the time of each berry-picker and the amount of his or her wage
was marked opposite. The Squire took it and adjusted his glasses with a
certain grimness--he was honest to the core, but few things came harder
to him than parting with money.

Dave and his mother at the churn exchanged a friendly wink. The
extracting of coin from the head of the house was no easy process.
Mother and son both enjoyed its accomplishment through an outside agency.
It was too hard a process in the home circle to be at all agreeable.

While the Squire was wrestling with his arithmetic, Dave noticed a
strange girl pass by the outer gate, pause, go on and then return. He
looked at her with deep interest. She was so pale and tired-looking it
seemed as if she had not strength enough left to walk to the house. Her
long lashes rested wearily on the pale cheeks. She lifted them with an
effort, and Dave found himself staring eagerly in a pair of great,
sorrowful brown eyes.

The girl came on unsteadily up the walk to where the Squire sat, thumbing
his account to the berry-pickers. "Well, girl, who are you?" he said,
not as unkindly as the words might imply.

The sound of her own voice, as she tried to answer his question, was like
the far-off droning of a river. It did not seem to belong to her. "My
name is Moore--Anna Moore--and I thought--I hoped perhaps you might be
good enough to give me work." The strange faces spun about her eyes.
She tottered and would have fallen if Dave had not caught her.

Dave, the silent, the slow of action, the cool-hea