y vos grazy, you bet. He ban
a goot friend to me--ay, he ban a goot friend to all peoples."

He helped her up, very tenderly, and made her sit on a stool close to
the one he occupied. There was a very long interval of silence, during
which his great face and beard were hidden in the hollow of his hands.
Then he spoke again, in a very low voice, as if he had been addressing
the smallest of his own babes.

"You poor leetle leddy," he repeated, "I feels most turriple sorry for
Hugo, for it most tear my heart out yoost to look at him. But vhen I
looks at you I feels turriple sorry for you too. I knows vhat it must
be, sure ting, for a leetle leddy like you to be sittin' here, in dis
leetle shack, a-lookin' at de man she lofe an see de life goin' out of
him. Last fall Hugo ban gone a vhiles back East again, and vhen you
comes I tank mebbe you some nice gal he promise to marry. Even vhen de
telegraft come I make sure it is so. I pring de bit paper here myself
an' vaits a vhiles, but he no come and I haf to go on. I vanted to see
de happy face on him. I say to myself, 'Hah! You rascal Hugo, you
nefer tell nodding to your ole friend Stefan, but he know all de
same.' But vhen I got to go I couldn't say nodding. I leaf de paper on
de table here an' I tank how happy he is vhen he come home an' find
it. You poor leetle leddy!"

The man was mistaken, most honestly so, for no idea of love had ever
entered Hugo's head, and none had come to Madge. Yet the big fellow's
words seemed to stab the girl to the heart and she moaned. She felt
that she could not allow Hugo's friend to remain undeceived. There had
been already too many mysteries, too many lies--she would have no
share in them if she could help it.

"I--I wasn't in love with him when I came, Stefan," she faltered.
"He--he was a stranger to me. I had never seen him--never in all my
life. I came here because--because there has been some terrible
mistake--in some letters, queer letters that bade me come here
and--and meet a man who wanted a wife. And I--I was a poor miserable
sick girl in New York and--and I just couldn't keep body and soul
together anymore--and--and be a good decent girl. And those letters
seemed so beautiful that I felt I must come and see the man who wrote
them, and--and I was ready to marry him if he would be kind to me
and--and treat me decently and--and keep me from starvation and
suffering. And when I came here he didn't know anything about it,
and--and