and the round shock of wool perhaps never had a covering; yet it was bowed to the rain, and the little blackey went by with lagging step and a sort of slow crying.  It touched Elizabeth with a disagreeable feeling of pain.  The thought had hardly crossed her mind, that she was sorry for her, when to her great surprise she saw her companion go to the door and ask the little object of her pity to come in under the shed.  The child stopped her slow step and her crying and looked up at him.

“Come in here till the rain’s over,” he repeated.

She gave her head a sort of matter-of-course shake, without moving a pair of intelligent black eyes which had fixed on his face.

“Come in,” said Winthrop.

The child shook her head again, and said,

“Can’t!”

“Why not?” said Winthrop.

“Mustn’t!”

“Why mustn’t you?”

“’Cause.”

“Come in,” said Winthrop, —­ and to Elizabeth’s exceeding astonishment he laid hold of the little black shoulder and drew the girl into the shop, —­ “it is going to storm hard; —­ why mustn’t you?”

The little blackey immediately squatted herself down on the ground against the wall, and looking up at him repeated,

“’Cause.”

“It’s going to be a bad storm; —­ you’ll be better under here.”

The child’s eyes went out of the door for a moment, and then came back to his face, as if with a sort of fascination.

“How far have you to go?”

“Home.”

“How far is that?”

“It’s six miles, I guess,” said the owner of the eyes.

“That’s too far for you to go in the storm.  The lightning might kill you.”

“Kill me!”

“Yes.  It might.”

“I guess I’d be glad if it did,” she said, with another glance at the storm.

“Glad if it did! —­ why?”

“’Cause.”

“’Cause what?” said Winthrop, entering more into the child’s interests, Elizabeth thought, than he had done into hers.

“’Cause,” repeated the blackey. —­ “I don’t want to get home.”

“Who do you live with?”

“I live with my mother, when I’m to home.”

“Where do you live when you are not at home?”

“Nowheres.”

The gathered storm came down at this point with great fury.  The rain fell, whole water; little streams even made their way under the walls of the shanty and ran across the floor.  The darkness asked no help from black walls and smoky roof.

“Isn’t this better than to be out?” said Winthrop, after his eyes had been for a moment drawn without by the tremendous pouring of the rain.  But the little black girl looked at it and said doggedly,

“I don’t care.”

“Where have you been with that basket?”

“Down yonder —­ where all the folks goes,” she said with a slight motion of her head towards the built-up quarter of the country.