an to stir the fire industriously.

Elizabeth saw that she must have the difficulty over at once or her
courage would wilt. Setting Jack on the floor, she went to Nathan and put
her hand on his arm detainingly.

"You have fire enough, Uncle Nate. Let me talk to you."

"Well?" he said briefly.

The girl was staggered by the nature of her reception. It was worse than
she had expected. Luther Hansen's estimate of the real situation had been
only too right. She stood before Nathan Hornby trembling and disconcerted
by the wall of his silence. The old kitchen clock ticked loudly, she could
hear her own pulses, and the freshly stirred fire roared--roared in a
rusty and unpolished stove. Dust lay thick on the unswept floor. Nathan
needed her. She would win her way back to his heart.

"Uncle Nate, I don't blame you one bit if you aren't nice to me. I haven't
deserved it, but----"

"I guess you needn't 'Uncle Nate' me any more," he said when she paused.

His speech was bitter and full of animosity, but it was better than his
compelling silence.

"I don't blame you one bit for being mad at me----I should think you would
be. I don't know what I'm going to say to you either, but I've come to beg
your forgiveness," she stammered.

Nathan Hornby did not speak, but waited coldly for her to continue. There
was plainly no help offered her.

"I--I can't explain, Uncle Nate--I am going to call you so--you--you shall
not put me away. I have come for your forgiveness and--and I'm going to
stay till I get it. I--I can't explain--there--there are things in life
that we can't explain, but I'm innocent of this stuck-up business you
think I've had. I--I've loved you and Aunt Susan. Oh, Uncle Nate, I've
loved her better than I ever did my own mother," she ended with a sob.

There was the voice of honesty in what she said, but Nathan remembered his
wrongs.

"If that's so, why didn't you come t' see 'er?" he said. "If you loved
'er, why'd you let 'er go down to 'er grave a pinin' for you? She looked
for you till she was crazy 'most, an' she never got a decent word out of
you, nor a decent visit neither. If you loved 'er, what'd you act that way
for?"

The memory of that last day, when his wife had yearned so pitifully for
this girl, arose before him as he stood there, and shook his faith in the
honesty of Elizabeth's purposes in spite of the earnestness of her
manner.

"That is the one thing I cannot explain, Uncle Nate," Elizabeth