little."

"You?" He raised himself on his elbow, looking at her with sudden
interest. "You're from the Mountain? How curious! I suppose that's why
you're so different...."

Her happy blood bathed her to the forehead. He was praising her--and
praising her because she came from the Mountain!

"Am I... different?" she triumphed, with affected wonder.

"Oh, awfully!" He picked up her hand and laid a kiss on the sunburnt
knuckles.

"Come," he said, "let's be off." He stood up and shook the grass from
his loose grey clothes. "What a good day! Where are you going to take me
tomorrow?"

VI

That evening after supper Charity sat alone in the kitchen and listened
to Mr. Royall and young Harney talking in the porch.

She had remained indoors after the table had been cleared and old Verena
had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated
herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and
still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green,
and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a
little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's voices
rose and fell.

Mr. Royall's was full of a sonorous satisfaction. It was a long time
since he had had anyone of Lucius Harney's quality to talk to: Charity
divined that the young man symbolized all his ruined and unforgotten
past. When Miss Hatchard had been called to Springfield by the illness
of a widowed sister, and young Harney, by that time seriously embarked
on his task of drawing and measuring all the old houses between
Nettleton and the New Hampshire border, had suggested the possibility of
boarding at the red house in his cousin's absence, Charity had trembled
lest Mr. Royall should refuse. There had been no question of lodging
the young man: there was no room for him. But it appeared that he could
still live at Miss Hatchard's if Mr. Royall would let him take his meals
at the red house; and after a day's deliberation Mr. Royall consented.

Charity suspected him of being glad of the chance to make a little
money. He had the reputation of being an avaricious man; but she was
beginning to think he was probably poorer than people knew. His practice
had become little more than a vague legend, revived only at lengthening
intervals by a summons to Hepburn or Nettleton; and he appeared to
depend for his living mainly on the scant produce of his farm, and
on the commissions rece