She had also inherited his calculating and planning nature. With tough
tenacity he could sacrifice years of earning and saving and planning
to acquire farms and meadows and orchards. Thus the girl could
meditate and plan her fate which, until yesterday, had been fluid as
water but which to-day lay definitely anchored in the soul of a
stranger lad.

Her education had been narrow. She knew the little that an old
governess and a comfortable pastor could teach. But she read
whatever she could get hold of--from the tattered "pony" to Homer
which a boy friend had loaned her, to the most horrible
penny-dreadfuls which were her father's delight in his rare hours
of leisure.

And she assimilated what she read and adapted it to her own fate. Thus
her imagination was familiar with happiness, with delusion,
with crime....

She knew that she was beautiful. If the humility of her play-fellows
had not assured her of this fact, she would have been enlightened by
the long glances and jesting admiration of her father's guests.

Her father was strict. He interfered with ferocity if a traveller
jested with her too intimately. Nevertheless he liked to have her come
into the inn proper and slip, smiling and curtsying, past the
wealthier guests. It was not unprofitable.

Upon his short, fleshy bow-legs, with his suspiciously calculating
blink, with his avarice and his sharp tongue, he stood between her and
the world, permitting only so much of it to approach her as seemed, at