een none of these things, or, having seen them,
she would have dared greatly. She was too cool, too clear-sighted,
perhaps, for a heroine of romance. The single virtue that has fed
vampire-like on the blood of the others, the abject attitude of the
heart, the moral chicanery of sex--she would have none of these things.

"I am very fond of him, but I want to live--to live," she said, raising
her arms with a free movement to the sky, while she looked after his
figure. "Poor Abel," she added after a moment, "he will never get over
it."

Then, while the sigh of compassion was still on her lips, she was
arrested by a scene which occurred in the sunny meadow. From the brook
a woman's form had risen like a startled rabbit at Abel's approach,
wavering against the background of willows, as if uncertain whether to
advance or to retreat. The next instant, as though in obedience to some
mental change, it came quickly forward and faced the miller with an
upward movement of the hands to shelter a weeping face.

"I believe--I really believe it is Judy Hatch," said Molly to herself,
and there was a faint displeasure in her voice. "I wonder what she is
doing in the willows?"

Judy Hatch it was, and at sight of Abel she had sprung up in terror from
the edge of the brook, poised for flight like a wild thing before
the gun of the hunter. He saw that her eyes were red and swollen from
weeping, her face puckered and distorted. The pain in his own heart was
so acute that for a moment he felt a sensation of relief in finding that
he was not alone in his agony--that the universal portion of suffering
had not been allotted entirely to himself, as he had imagined. Had she
smiled, he would have brushed past her in silence, but because of her
agitated and despairing look, he called her name, and when she turned
toward him in bewilderment, held out his hand. It was a small accident
that brought them together--nothing more than the fact that she had
stooped to bathe her eyes in the stream before going on to the turnpike.

"Don't go, Judy; you're in trouble, I see, and so am I," he said with
bitterness.

"Oh, Mr. Revercomb!" she blurted out. "I didn't want anybody to catch me
in such a pass!"

"I'm not anybody, Judy; I'm a poor devil that was born without sense
enough to plough his furrow straight."

She was a plain woman, but a pretty one would have sent him off in a
panic over the meadow. He had had his lesson from a pretty woman, and
the