een brought up by an
aunt, she was very poor and very ambitious.

"Wants a moosical eddication," finished up Crooked Jack, "and, by jingo,
she orter have it, for anything like the voice of her I never heerd.
She sung for us that evening after supper and I thought 'twas an angel
singing. It just went through me like a shaft o' light. The Spencer
young ones are crazy over her already. She's got twenty pupils around
here and in Grafton and Avonlea."

When the Old Lady had found out everything Crooked Jack could tell
her, she went into the house and sat down by the window of her little
sitting-room to think it all over. She was tingling from head to foot
with excitement.

Leslie's daughter! This Old Lady had had her romance once. Long
ago--forty years ago--she had been engaged to Leslie Gray, a young
college student who taught in Spencervale for the summer term one
year--the golden summer of Margaret Lloyd's life. Leslie had been a
shy, dreamy, handsome fellow with literary ambitions, which, as he and
Margaret both firmly believed, would one day bring him fame and fortune.

Then there had been a foolish, bitter quarrel at the end of that golden
summer. Leslie had gone away in anger, afterwards he had written, but
Margaret Lloyd, still in the grasp of her pride and resentment, had sent
a harsh answer. No more letters came; Leslie Gray never returned; and
one day Margaret wakened to the realization that she had put love out of
her life for ever. She knew it would never be hers again; and from that
moment her feet were turned from youth to walk down the valley of shadow
to a lonely, eccentric age.

Many years later she heard of Leslie's marriage; then came news of his
death, after a life that had not fulfilled his dreams for him. Nothing
more she had heard or known--nothing to this day, when she had seen his
daughter pass her by unseeing in the beech hollow.

"His daughter! And she might have been MY daughter," murmured the Old
Lady. "Oh, if I could only know her and love her--and perhaps win her
love in return! But I cannot. I could not have Leslie Gray's daughter
know how poor I am--how low I have been brought. I could not bear that.
And to think she is living so near me, the darling--just up the lane
and over the hill. I can see her go by every day--I can have that dear
pleasure, at least. But oh, if I could only do something for her--give
her some little pleasure! It would be such a delight."

When the Old Lady hap