“Ye can be happy here if ye will only think so.  If we seem hard on ye in the house about the meals and that, I’ll try to be better tempered.  Ye haven’t read all the books we have yet, but I’ll get more the first chance if ye like.  Come, Sissy, think how lonesome I’d be without ye!”

He moved his shoulders nervously while he spoke, as if the effort to coax was a greater strain than the effort to teach or command.  His manner might have been that of a father who wheedled a child to do right, or a lover who sued on his own behalf; the better love, for that matter, is much the same in all relations of life.

This last plea evidently moved her just a little.  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bates,” she said.

“What are ye sorry for, Sissy?”

“That I’m to leave you.”

“But ye’re not going.  Can’t ye get that out of your head?  How will ye go?”

“In the boat, when they take father.”

At that the first flash of anger came from him.  “Ye won’t go, if I have to hold ye by main force.  I can’t go to bury your father.  I have to stay here and earn bread and butter for you and me, or we’ll come short of it.  If ye think I’m going to let ye go with a man I know little about—­”

His voice broke off in indignation, and as for the girl, whether from sudden anger at being thus spoken to, or from the conviction of disappointment which had been slowly forcing itself upon her, she began to cry.  His anger vanished, leaving an evident discomfort behind.  He stood before her with a weary look of effort on his face, as if he were casting all things in heaven and earth about in his mind to find which of them would be most likely to afford her comfort, or at least, to put an end to tears which, perhaps for a reason unknown to himself, gave him excessive annoyance.

“Come, Sissy”—­feebly—­“give over.”

But the girl went on crying, not loudly or passionately, but with no sign of discontinuance, as she stood there, large and miserable, before him.  He settled his shoulders obstinately against the wood pile, thinking to wait till she should speak or make some further sign.  Nothing but strength of will kept him in his place, for he would gladly have fled from her.  He had now less guidance than before to what was passing in her mind, for her face was more hidden from his sight as the light of the sinking sun focussed more exclusively in the fields of western sky behind her.

Then the sun went down behind the rugged hills of the lake’s other shore; and, as it sank below their sharp outlines, their sides, which had been clear and green, became dim and purple; the blue went out of the waters of the lake, they became the hue of steel touched with iridescence of gold; and above the hills, vapour that had before been almost invisible in the sky, now hung in upright layers of purple mist, blossoming into primrose yellow on the lower edges.  A few moments more and grey bloom, such as one sees on purple fruit, was on these vast hangings of cloud that grouped themselves more largely, and gold flames burned on their fringes.  Behind them there were great empty reaches of lambent blue, and on the sharp edge of the shadowed hills there was a line of fire.