a little girl, and you were carving all that
woodwork at the old bank, and she let me stay there with you! All our
happiest days have come through them. And now we can deliver them from
great misery."

"But my money?" he interposed.

"Money is nothing between friends," she said eagerly. "Will you make my
life miserable, father? I shall be thinking of them always, night and
day; and they will never see me again if he is sent to jail through our
fault. There never was a kinder man than he is; and I always thought him
a good man till now."

"A thief; worse than a common thief," said her father. "What will become
of my little daughter when I am dead?"

Phebe made no answer except by tears. For a few minutes old Marlowe
watched her bowed head and face hidden in her hands, till a gray hue
came upon his withered face, and the angry gleam died away from his
eyes. Hitherto her slightest wish had been a law to him, and to see her
weeping was anguish to him. To have a child who could hear and speak had
been a joy that had redeemed his life from wretchedness, and crowned it
with an inexhaustible delight. If he never saw her smile again, what
would become of him? She was hiding her face from him even now, and
there was no medium of communication between them save by touch. He must
call her attention to what he had to say by making her look at him.
Almost timidly he stretched out his withered and cramped hand to lay it
upon her head.

"I must do whatever you please," he said, when she lifted up her face
and looked at him with tearful eyes; "if it killed me I must do it. But
it is a hard thing you bid me do, Phebe."

He turned away to brush the last speck of dust from the eagle's wings,
and lifting it up carefully carried it away to pack in his wagon, Phebe
holding the lantern for him till all was done. Then hand in hand they
walked down the foot-worn path across the field to the house, as they
had done ever since she had been a tottering little child, hardly able
to clasp his one finger with her baby hand.

Roland Sefton was crouching over the dying embers on the hearth, more in
the utter misery of soul than in bodily chilliness, though he felt cold
and shivering, as if stripped of all that made life desirable to him.
There is no icy chill like that. He did not look round when the door
opened, though Phebe spoke to him; for he could not face old Marlowe, or
force himself to read the silent yet eloquent fingers, which only co