ow hard.

Old Martyn took off his leather apron with a troubled face, and, as he
passed his daughter, gently laid his tremulous, stained hand upon her
head. He felt her least uneasiness, it would seem, as a chameleon feels
a cloud upon the sun.

She turned her face softly and kissed him. But she did not smile.

She had planned a little for this holiday supper; saving three
mellow-cheeked Louise Bonnes--expensive pears just then--to add to their
bread and molasses. She brought them out from the closet, and watched
her father eat them.

"Going out again Senath?" he asked, seeing that she went for her hat and
shawl, u and not a mouthful have you eaten! Find your old father dull
company hey? Well, well!"

She said something about needing the air; the mill was hot; she should
soon be back; she spoke tenderly and she spoke truly, but she went out
into the windy sunset with her little trouble, and forgot him. The old
man, left alone, sat for a while with his head sunk upon his breast. She
was all he had in the world,--this one little crippled girl that the
world had dealt hardly with. She loved him; but he was not, probably
would never be, to her exactly what she was to him. Usually he forgot
this. Sometimes he quite understood it, as to-night.

Asenath, with the purpose only of avoiding Dick, and of finding a still
spot where she might think her thoughts undisturbed, wandered away over
the eastern bridge, and down to the river's brink. It was a moody place;
such a one as only apathetic or healthy natures (I wonder if that is
tautology!) can healthfully yield to. The bank sloped steeply; a fringe
of stunted aspens and willows sprang from the frozen sand: it was a
sickening, airless place in summer,--it was damp and desolate now. There
was a sluggish wash of water under foot, and a stretch of dreary flats
behind. Belated locomotives shrieked to each other across the river, and
the wind bore down the current the roar and rage of the dam. Shadows
were beginning to skulk under the huge brown bridge. The silent mills
stared up and down and over the streams with a blank, unvarying stare.
An oriflamme of scarlet burned in the west, flickered dully in the
dirty, curdling water, flared against the windows of the Pemberton,
which quivered and dripped, Asenath thought, as if with blood.

She sat down on a gray stone, wrapped in her gray shawl, curtained about
by the aspens from the eye of passers on the bridge. She had a fancy for