nd disappeared
toward the Cresswell fields. Then Bles sat down beside Zora, facing the
fields, and gravely took her hand. She looked at him in quick,
breathless fear.

"Zora," he said, "sometimes you tell lies, don't you?"

"Yes," she said slowly; "sometimes."

"And, Zora, sometimes you steal--you stole the pin from Miss Taylor, and
we stole Mr. Cresswell's mule for two days."

"Yes," she said faintly, with a perplexed wrinkle in her brows, "I stole
it."

"Well, Zora, I don't want you ever to tell another lie, or ever to take
anything that doesn't belong to you."

She looked at him silently with the shadow of something like terror far
back in the depths of her deep eyes.

"Always--tell--the truth?" she repeated slowly.

"Yes."

Her fingers worked nervously.

"All the truth?" she asked.

He thought a while.

"No," said he finally, "it is not necessary always to tell all the
truth; but never tell anything that isn't the truth."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Even if it hurts me?"

"Even if it hurts. God is good, He will not let it hurt much."

"He's a fair God, ain't He?" she mused, scanning the evening sky.

"Yes--He's fair, He wouldn't take advantage of a little girl that did
wrong, when she didn't know it was wrong."

Her face lightened and she held his hands in both hers, and said
solemnly as though saying a prayer:

"I won't lie any more, and I won't steal--and--" she looked at him in
startled wistfulness--he remembered it in after years; but he felt he
had preached enough.

"And now for the seed!" he interrupted joyously. "And then--the Silver
Fleece!"

That night, for the first time, Bles entered Zora's home. It was a
single low, black room, smoke-shadowed and dirty, with two dingy beds
and a gaping fire-place. On one side of the fire-place sat the yellow
woman, young, with traces of beauty, holding the white child in her
arms; on the other, hugging the blaze, huddled a formless heap, wreathed
in coils of tobacco smoke--Elspeth, Zora's mother.

Zora said nothing, but glided in and stood in the shadows.

"Good-evening," said Bles cheerily. The woman with the baby alone
responded.

"I came for the seed you promised us--the cotton-seed."

The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and
twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing--filthy of breath,
dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung
loosely like tusks and the folds of fat o