e declared
her secret. But how could she tell her now? It would be a blow, it might
be a fatal blow. And at the same time how could she satisfy August? He
thought she had bowed to the same old tyranny again for an indefinite
time. But she could not forsake her parents in their poverty and
afflictions.

The fourteenth of August, the day on which possession was to have been
given to Bob Walker, came and went, but no Bob Walker appeared. A week
more passed, in which Samuel Anderson could not muster enough courage to
go to see Walker, in which Samuel Anderson and his wife waited in a
vague hope that something might happen. And every day of that week Julia
had a letter from August, which did not say one word of the trial that
it was for him to wait, but which said much of the wrong Julia was doing
to herself to submit so long. And Julia, like her father and mother, was
waiting for she knew not what.

At last the suspense became to her unendurable.

"Father," she said, "why don't you go to see Bob Walker? You might buy
the farm back again."

"I don't know why he don't come and take it," said Mr. Anderson
dejectedly.

This conversation roused Mrs. Abigail. There was some hope. She got up
in bed, and told Samuel to go to the county-seat and see if the deeds
had ever been recorded. And while her husband was gone she sat up and
looked better, and even scolded a little, so that Julia felt encouraged.
But she dreaded to see her father come back.

Samuel Anderson entered the house on his return with a blank
countenance. Sitting down, he put his face between his hands a minute in
utter dejection.

"Why don't you speak?" said Mrs. Anderson in a broken voice.

"The land was all transferred to Andrew immediately, and he owns every
foot of it. He must have sent Bob Walker here to buy it."

"Oh! I'm so glad!" cried Julia.

But her mother only gave her one reproachful look and went off into
hysterical sobbing and crying over the wrong that Andrew had done her.
And all that night Julia watched by her mother, while Samuel Anderson
sat in dejection by the bed. As for Norman, he had quickly relapsed into
his old habits, and his former cronies had generously forgiven him his
temporary piety, considering the peculiar circumstances of the case some
extenuation. Now that there was trouble in the house he staid away,
which was a good thing so far as it went.

The next afternoon Mrs. Anderson rallied a little, and, looking at
Julia, s