“That was quite different from what lies before you now,” he replied.  “You may have had the work to do, but you had always your father’s judgment to rely upon.  In future you will have to stand alone and judge for yourself.”

Katherine bowed her head in token that she understood, then turned away too crushed to utter a word.  Jervis Ferrars went back to the sickroom, wincing at the pain he had been compelled to inflict as if the blow had fallen on himself.  There were no tears in Katherine’s eyes, only the terrible black misery in her heart.  She had filled in all the blanks in what, the Englishman had said, and she understood perfectly well that henceforth her father would be only as a child who needed guarding and shielding, instead of a man whose judgment could be relied upon.  She had no deception in her mind concerning what would be required of her; the family living must depend on her in the future, and it would rest upon her skill and industry whether the living she earned were merely subsistence, or the decent comfort in which they had all been reared.

“God helping me, they shall want for nothing—­nothing!” she exclaimed vehemently, and the very energy with which she spoke seemed to give her back her courage.

It had been a momentous day in her life, a day calling for rare courage and endurance, and the demands on her strength had left her so tired that the other hard days looming in the near distance seemed all the more terrible because of the present exhaustion of body and mind.  It was nearly time for shutting up the store, but it was twilight still, for in those northern latitudes the afterglow on clear nights lasts for hours.  Katherine was busy at her father’s desk in the corner doing the necessary writing which comes to every storekeeper at the close of the day, and she was just wondering when Miles was coming to lock the door and fold the shutter over the one small window, when she heard a slouching step outside, and, glancing up, saw Oily Dave entering at the door.  He looked more shifty and slippery than usual, but his manner was bland, even deferential, when he spoke.

“Good evening, Miss Radford!  Nice thaw, ain’t it? but a bit rapid.  How’s ’Dook?”

Katherine winced.  Of course every man at Roaring Water Portage and Seal Cove called every other man by his Christian name, and she had always been used to hearing “’Duke”, but nevertheless it grated horribly, so her manner was a trifle more haughty than usual when she announced that her father was not so well, although she did not choose to inform this man that he was very ill.

“Well, well, poor chap, he don’t seem to get on fast, no, that he don’t.  It’s downright lucky for him that he’s got sech a bright gal as you to look after things.  He is a smart sight better off than I should have been under the circumstances;” and Oily Dave struck an attitude of respectful admiration, leering at Katherine from his half-closed eyes.