usly.

"There is something in your face I never saw before. It made me
stop."

"I am glad it was there, then," he said simply, "for I wished you to
stop, though I did not want to say so."

"Saturday you would have said so," she replied with simple frankness.

He came closer to her with equal frankness, and yet with a tenderness
which thrilled her he said:

"Perhaps I was not so sure Saturday of many things that I am positive
of to-day."

"Of what?" she asked flushing.

He smiled again, but it was not the old smile which had set her to
trembling with a flurry of doubt and shame. It was the smile of
respect. Then it left him, and in its stead flashed instantly the old
conquering light when he said:

"To-night, you know, you will be mine!"

The change of it all, the shock of it, numbed her. She tried to
smile, but it was the lifeless curl of her lips instead--and the look
she gave him--of resignation, of acquiescence, of despair--he had
seen it once before, in the beautiful eyes of the first young doe
that fell to his rifle. She was not dead when he bounded to the spot
where she lay--and she gave him that look.

Edward Conway watched his two daughters go out of the gate on their
way to the mill, sitting with his feet propped up, and drunker than
he had been for weeks. But indistinct as things were, the poignancy
of it went through him, and he groaned. In a dazed sort of way he
knew it was the last of all his dreams of respectability, that from
now on there was nothing for him and his but degradation and a lower
place in life. To do him justice, he did not care so much for
himself; already he felt that he himself was doomed, that he could
never expect to shake off the terrible habit which had grown to be
part of his life,--unless, he thought, unless, as the Bishop had
said--by the blow of God. He paled to think what that might mean. God
had so many ways of striking blows unknown to man. But for his
daughters--he loved them, drunkard though he was. He was proud of
their breeding, their beauty, their name. If he could only go and
give them a chance--if the blow would only fall and take him!

The sun was warm. He grew sleepy. He remembered afterwards that he
fell out of his chair and that he could not arise.... It was a nice
place to sleep anyway.... A staggering hound, with scurviness and
sores, came up the steps, then on the porch, and licked his face....

When he awoke some one was bathing his face with cold