rget."

The judge continued to gaze. He was being penetrated by a suspicion.
This girl knew Minty Foster. Supposing--

But he had called on Miss Derwent, and she had verified Thinkright's
description. It was her impression of muteness, pallor, sadness, which
had decided the judge to drop his affairs and have a look at the farm.
What did Edna mean? What did Thinkright mean? Was it a plot to work on
his sympathies? This smiling maid with mischief in her eyes frolicking
recklessly in the clumsy old rowboat was the opposite type from the
cold, pale specimen he had braced himself to meet in the Basin path.
She would have been suitably environed in its changeless sombre firs.
This girl, with her length of limb and graceful breadth of shoulder,
had greater affinity with the white birches delicately fluttering their
light bright greens as they leaned eagerly toward the water and Sylvia.

"The Tide Mill hurt beyond pardon, eh?" he returned. "Well, possibly it
_didn't_ relish the epithets of the men who sank their money in it."

The flight of fancy was unprecedented for the speaker. He was sensible
of unwonted excitement in a possibility.

His companion was still dimpling at the lean figure in the roomy frock
coat and high hat.

Laura had been a small woman. The judge was considering that if his
companion should rise she would equal or overtop his height.

Starved. Very needy. So Thinkright had put it. Nonsense. This _riante_
dryad of the birches could be nothing to him.

"Shows a small disposition, though, after all these years," he added
after the brief pause. "Don't you think so? Nursing injuries and
bearing malice and all that sort of business?"

The smile died from Sylvia's face. She half averted it, and trailed her
fingers through the quiet ripples. "Thinkright says so," she answered.

And then the judge knew that those young lips so suddenly grave had
kissed his picture good-night, that that young head had been pillowed
on his sister's breast, and had constituted whatever brightness was in
her troubled life.

A strange tightening constricted his throat, for, the temporary heat of
the girl's exertion with the oars passing away, he saw her cheeks pale,
and it was with a grave glance that she looked at him again. "Do you
know Thinkright Johnson?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I suppose he is the best man in the world," she added. "Don't you?"

The high hat nodded again. Judge Trent would not have given unqualified