vin', to th' orphints
or--such as me. Ther' 's things th' Master likes in them, 'n' it'll
come right, it'll come right at last; they'll have a chance--somewhere."

Margret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet. What
had she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong? Her own higher life
was starved, thwarted. Could it be that the blood of these her
brothers called against HER from the ground? No wonder that the
huckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy. It was not an
easy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave. And yet--was
she to blame? Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learned
conservatism in her cradle. Her life in the West had not yet quickened
her pulse. So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced her
in this girl, just as you or I would have done. She had her own pain
to bear. Was she her brother's keeper? It was true, there was wrong;
this woman's soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood,
of her birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help?
She was free,--and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all the
soul's diseases, and----

Well, Lois was quiet now,--ready to be drawn into a dissertation on
Barney's vices and virtues, or her room, where "th' air was so strong,
'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh,--best in THIS town,"
she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or on
the river-bank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of the
farms. The fences were well built, she noticed,--the barns wide and
snug-looking: for this county in Indiana is settled by New England
people, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians. They both leave their
mark on barns or fields, I can tell you! The two women were talking
all the way. In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this
silent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about
paltry, common things,--partly, as I said, from a hope to forget
herself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world
which opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbid
shadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures were
intensely real, like those of her class. If there were latent powers
in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foul
air and life, she knew nothing of it. She never probed her own soul
with fierce sel