Her lips began to quiver and her voice to break, for the visit from which she had expected so much had proved a blank, and her high hopes were dead as the woman by whose grave she stood.  She had folded her hands one over the other upon the top rail of the fence, and her companion looked at them and thought how small they were and shapely, too, although brown with the work she had to do when Jake and Mandy Ann were both gone and Sonsie came only at meal times.  He was not a brute.  He was simply a proud, cold, selfish man, whose will had seldom been crossed, and who found himself in a tight place from which he could not wholly extricate himself.  He was sorry for Eudora, for he guessed how desolate she would be when he was gone, and there was nothing left but that home in the clearing, with old granny and Mandy Ann.  He had not seen Jake, of whom Eudora now spoke, saying, “Our house never seemed so poor to me till I seen you in it.  It will be better when Jake comes, for he is to fix it up—­he knows how.”

It was the only excuse she had made, and she did it falteringly, while her companion’s heart rose up in his throat and made him very uncomfortable, as he thought of Jake and Mandy Ann caring for this girl, while his income was larger than he could spend.  It had not occurred to him to offer her money till that moment, and he did not know now that she would take it.  Turning his back to her as if looking at something across the road, he counted a roll of bills, and turning back took one of the little brown hands resting on the rail in his and pressed the roll into it.  Just for an instant the slim fingers held fast to his hand—­then, as she felt the bills and saw what they were, she drew back and dropped them upon the sand.

“I can’t; no, I can’t,” she said, when he urged them upon her, telling her it was his right to give and hers to take.

As usual his will prevailed, and when at last he said good-by and walked rapidly towards the river, while she went slowly through the woods and across the clearing to the log-house, where Mandy Ann was having a frightful time getting ole Miss to bed, she had in her possession more money than Jake would earn in months.

“I would send it all back,” she thought, “if we didn’t need it badly, and he said it was right for me to take it, but some of it must go.  I’ll send it just before the ‘Hatty’ sails.”

There was no one to send but Mandy Ann, who, after many misgivings on the part of her mistress, was entrusted with a part of the money, with injunctions neither to look at nor lose it, but to hold it tight in her hand until she gave it to the gentleman.  Eudora had thought of writing a note, but the effort was too great.  Mandy Ann could say all she wanted to have said, and in due time the negress started for the boat, nothing loth to visit it again and bandy words with Ted.  The “Hatty” was blowing off steam preparatory to starting, when a pair of bare