mly realizing, although in a totally different
way, that here was a moment of important decision. Mrs. Herndon
darkened the doorway, and stood looking out.

"Well, Mr. Bob Hampton," she questioned, plainly, "what is this going
to be?"

He glanced toward her, slightly lifting his hat, and promptly releasing
the girl's clinging hand.

"Miss Gillis consents to remain," he announced shortly, and, denying
himself so much as another glance at his companion, strode down the
narrow path to the road. A moment the girl's eyes followed him through
the dust cloud, a single tear stealing down her cheek. Only a short
week ago she had utterly despised this man, now he had become truly
more to her than any one else in the wide, wide world. She did not in
the least comprehend the mystery; indeed, it was no mystery, merely the
simple trust of a child naturally responding to the first unselfish
love given it. Perhaps Mrs. Herndon dimly understood, for she came
forth quietly, and led the girl, now sobbing bitterly, within the cool
shadows of the house.

CHAPTER VIII

A LAST REVOLT

It proved a restless day, and a sufficiently unpleasant one, for Mr.
Hampton. For a number of years he had been diligently training himself
in the school of cynicism, endeavoring to persuade himself that he did
not in the least care what others thought, nor how his own career
ended; impelling himself to constant recklessness in life and thought.
He had thus successfully built up a wall between the present and that
past which long haunted his lonely moments, and had finally decided
that it was hermetically sealed. Yet now, this odd chit of a girl,
this waif whom he had plucked from the jaws of death, had overturned
this carefully constructed barrier as if it had been originally built
of mere cardboard, and he was compelled again to see himself, loathe
himself, just as he had in those past years.

Everything had been changed by her sudden entrance into his life,
everything except those unfortunate conditions which still bound him
helpless. He looked upon the world no longer through his cool, gray
eyes, but out of her darker ones, and the prospect appeared gloomy
enough. He thought it all over again and again, dwelling in reawakened
memory upon details long hidden within the secret recesses of his
brain, yet so little came from this searching survey that the result
left him no plan for the future. He had wandered too far away from
home; th