alled Mrs. Moore, "I wish to speak to you."

Janice, smiling, ran across the street and shook hands with the sick
woman over the fence palings. But she barely nodded to Mr. Cross Moore.

"I understand you're one o' these folks that's talking so foolish about
prohibition, and about shutting up the hotel. Is that so?" demanded
Mrs. Moore, her sunken, black eyes snapping.

"I don't think it is foolish, Mrs. Moore," Janice said pleasantly.
"And we don't wish to close the Inn--only its bar."

"Same thing," decided Mrs. Moore snappishly. "Takin' the bread and
butter out o' people's mouths! Ye better be in better business--all of
ye. And a young girl like you! I'd like to have my stren'th and have
the handling of you, Janice Day. I'd teach ye that children better be
seen than heard. Where you going to, Cross Moore?" for her husband had
turned the chair and was starting away from the fence.

"Well--now--Mother! You've told the girl yer mind, ain't ye?"
suggested Mr. Moore. "That's what you wanted to do, wasn't it?"

"I wish she was my young one," said Mrs. Moore, between her teeth, "and
I had the use o' my limbs. I'd make her behave herself!"

"I wish she _was_ ours, Mother," Mr. Moore said kindly. "I guess we'd
be mighty proud of her."

Janice did not hear his words. She had walked away from the fence with
flaming cheeks and tears in her eyes. She was sorry for Mrs. Moore's
misfortunes and had always tried to be kind to her; but this seemed
such an unprovoked attack.

Janice Day craved approbation as much as any girl living. She
appreciated the smiles that met her as she walked the streets of
Polktown. The scowls hurt her tender heart, and the harsh words of
Mrs. Moore wounded her deeply.

"I suppose that is the way they both feel toward me," she thought, with
a sigh.

The wreck of the old fishing dock--a favorite haunt of little Lottie
Drugg--was at the foot of the hill, and Janice halted here a moment to
look out across it, and over the quiet cove, to the pine-covered point
that gave the shallow basin its name.

Lottie had believed that in the pines her echo lived, and Janice could
almost hear now the childish wail of the little one as she shouted,
"He-a! he-a! he-a!" to the mysterious sprite that dwelt in the pines
and mocked her with its voice. Blind and very deaf, Lottie had been
wont to run fearlessly out upon the broken dock and "play with her
echo," as she called it. A wave of pity swept