that Molly Peterkin and himself stood together defrauded of their
rightful heritage of life; and as his thought broadened he felt
suddenly the pathos of her forlorn little figure, of her foolish
blue eyes, of her trivial vanities, of her girlish beauty, soiled
and worn by common handling. A look very like compassion was in
his face, and the girl, seeing it, reddened angrily and kicked at
a loose pebble in the path. When he went away a moment later he
left a careless message for Sol about the tobacco crop, and the
little white box containing the turquoise brooch was still in his
pocket.

That afternoon the trinket went back to Will with a curt letter.
"If you take my advice, you'll leave Molly Peterkin alone," he
wrote in his big, unformed hand, "for as far as I can see you are
too good a match to get on well together. She's a fool, you know,
and from the way you're going on just now it looks very much as
if you were one also. At any rate, I'm not your man for
gallantries. I'd rather hunt hares than women, any day--and
game's plentiful just now."

It was a long winter that year, and for the first time since her
terrible illness Mrs. Blake was forced to keep her bed during a
bitter spell of weather, when the raw winds whistled around the
little frame house, entering the cracks at the doors and the
loosened sashes of the windows. Cynthia grew drawn and pinched
with a sickly, frost-bitten look, and even Lila's rare bloom
drooped for a while like that of a delicate plant starving for
the sunshine. Christopher, who, as usual, was belated in his
winter's work, was kept busy hauling and chopping wood,
shovelling the snow away from the porch and the paths that led to