ded, seemed suddenly
bereft of his chilling serenity. "Here, mother, a chair; father, some
water, quick." He carried the swooning girl to the shadow of the porch
and fanned her tenderly with his broad-brimmed straw hat.

The old people hastened to do his bidding. Dave, excited and issuing
orders in that tone, was too unusual to be passed over lightly.

"What were you going to say, Miss Moore?" said the Squire as soon as the
brown eyes opened.

"I thought, perhaps, I might find something to do here--I'm looking for
work."

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Bartlett, smoothing the dark curls, "you are
not fit to stand, let alone work."

"You could not earn your salt," was the Squire's less sympathetic way of
expressing the same sentiment. "Where is your home?"

"I have no home." She looked at them desperately, her dark eyes
appealing to one and the other, as if they were the jury that held her
life in the balance. Only one pair of eyes seemed to hold out any hope.

"If you would only try me I could soon prove to you that I am not
worthless." Unconsciously she held out her hand in entreaty.

"Here we are, here we are, all off for Boston!" The voice was Hi's. He
was just turning in at the field gate with Kate beside him. Kate, a
ravishing vision, in pink muslin; a smiling, contented vision of happy,
rosy girlhood, coming back to the home-nest, where a thousand welcomes
awaited her.

"Hello, every one!" she said, running in and kissing them in turn, "how
nice it is to be home."

They forgot the homeless stranger and her pleading for shelter in their
glad welcome to the daughter of the house. She had shrunk back into the
shadow. She had never felt the desolation, the utter loneliness of her
position so keenly before.

"Hurrah for Kate!" cried the Squire, and everyone took it up and gave
three cheers for Kate Brewster.

The wanderer withdrew into the deepest shadow of the porch, that her
alien presence might not mar the joyous home-coming of Kate Brewster.
There was no jealousy in her soul for the fair girl who had such a royal
welcome back to the home-nest. She would not have robbed her of it if
such a thing had been possible, but the sense of her own desolation
gripped at the heart like an iron band.

She waited like a mendicant to beg for the chance of earning her bread.
That was all she asked--the chance to work, to eat the bread of
independence, and yet she knew how slim the chance was. She had been