."

"Have you any brothers or sisters?"

"I have a little sister a year younger than I am. The other four are
dead. They died long ago. I'm the only boy Mother had. Oh, I do so
wish I was bigger and older! If I was I could do something to save the
place--I'm sure I could. It is breaking Mother's heart to have to
leave it."

"So she has to leave it, has she?" said Turner grimly, with the old
hatred stirring in his heart.

"Yes. There is a mortgage on it and we're to be sold out very soon--so
the lawyers told us. Mother has tried so hard to make the farm pay but
she couldn't. I could if I was bigger--I know I could. If they would
only wait a few years! But there is no use hoping for that. Mother
cries all the time about it. She has lived at the Cove farm for over
thirty years and she says she can't live away from it now.
Elsie--that's my sister--and I do all we can to cheer her up, but we
can't do much. Oh, if I was only a man!"

The lad shut his lips together--how much his mouth was like his
father's--and looked out seaward with troubled blue eyes. Turner
smiled another grim smile. Oh, Neil Jameson, your old score was being
paid now!

Yet something embittered the sweetness of revenge. That boy's face--he
could not hate it as he had accustomed himself to hate the memory of
Neil Jameson and all connected with him.

"What was your mother's name before she married your father?" he
demanded abruptly.

"Lisbeth Miller," answered the boy, still frowning seaward over his
secret thoughts.

Turner started again. Lisbeth Miller! He might have known it. What
woman in all the world save Lisbeth Miller could have given her son
those eyes and curls? So Lisbeth had married Neil Jameson--little
Lisbeth Miller, his schoolboy sweetheart. He had forgotten her--or
thought he had; certainly he had not thought of her for years. But the
memory of her came back now with a rush.

Little Lisbeth--pretty little Lisbeth--merry little Lisbeth! How
clearly he remembered her! The old Miller place had adjoined his
uncle's farm. Lisbeth and he had played together from babyhood. How he
had worshipped her! When they were six years old they had solemnly
promised to marry each other when they grew up, and Lisbeth had let
him kiss her as earnest of their compact, made under a bloom-white
apple tree in the Miller orchard. Yet she would always blush furiously
and deny it ever afterwards; it made her angry to be reminded of it.

He saw himself go