on the lawn? Do you remember, Carry, where you sat in church, and the
singing, and what trouble we had together with the chaunts? There are
one or two at Bullhampton who never will forget it?"

"Nobody loves me now," she said, talking at him over her shoulder,
which was turned to him.

He thought for a moment that he would tell her that the Lord loved
her; but there was something human at his heart, something perhaps
too human, which made him feel that were he down low upon the ground,
some love that was nearer to him, some love that was more easily
intelligible, which had been more palpably felt, would in his frailty
and his wickedness be of more immediate avail to him than the love
even of the Lord God.

"Why should you think that, Carry?"

"Because I am bad."

"If we were to love only the good, we should love very few. I love
you, Carry, truly. My wife loves you dearly."

"Does she?" said the girl, breaking into low sobs. "No, she don't. I
know she don't. The likes of her couldn't love the likes of me. She
wouldn't speak to me. She wouldn't touch me."

"Come and try, Carry."

"Father would kill me," she said.

"Your father is full of wrath, no doubt. You have done that which
must make a father angry."

"Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I wouldn't dare to stand before his eye for a
minute. The sound of his voice would kill me straight. How could I go
back?"

"It isn't easy to make crooked things straight, Carry, but we may
try; and they do become straighter if one tries in earnest. Will you
answer me one question more?"

"Anything about myself, Mr. Fenwick?"

"Are you living in sin now, Carry?" She sat silent, not that she
would not answer him, but that she did not comprehend the extent
of the meaning of his question. "If it be so, and if you will not
abandon it, no honest person can love you. You must change yourself,
and then you will be loved."

"I have got the money which he gave me, if you mean that," she said.

Then he asked no further questions about herself, but reverted to the
subject of her brother. Could she bring him in to say a few words to
his old friend? But she declared that he was gone, and that she did
not know whither; that he might probably return this very day to the
mill, having told her that it was his purpose to do so soon. When he
expressed a hope that Sam held no consort with those bad men who had
murdered and robbed Mr. Trumbull, she answered him with such naive
assurance that any such