could be that a weak man could love her
strongly. Love, in any constant and permanent sense of the word, was an
almost unknown quality among her companions, and yet she had attributed
it to Bart. Well! his refusal of last night proved that she had been
mistaken--that was all. But possibly the leaven of her proposal would
work, and he would repent and come back to her. The fact that he had
evidently not betrayed her to the detective gave her hope of this. Her
thoughts about Toyner were only subordinate to the question, how she was
to rescue her father. With the light and strength of the morning, hope
in other possibilities of eluding Bart, even if he remained firm, came
back to her. She would at least work on; if she was baffled in the end,
it would be time enough to despair. Her sister was not her confidante,
she was her tool.

Ann waited until the shadow of the pear tree, which with ripening fruit
overhung the gable of their house, stretched itself far down the bit of
weedy grass that sloped to the river. The grass plot was wholly
untended, but nature had embroidered it with flowers and ferns.

Ann sat sewing by the table on which she kept her supply of beer. She
could not afford to lose her sales to-day, although she knew bitterly
that most of those who turned in for a drink did so out of prying
curiosity. Even Christa, not very quick of feeling, had felt this, and
had retired to lounge on the bed in the inner room with a paper novel.
Christa usually spent her afternoon in preparing some cheap finery to
wear in the cool of the evening, but she felt the family disgrace and
Ann's severity, and was disheartened. As Ann bided her time and
considered her own occupation and Christa's, she marvelled at the
audacity of the promise which she had offered to give Bart, yet so awful
was the question at stake that her only wish was that he had accepted
it.

At four o'clock in the afternoon she roused Christa and apportioned a
certain bit of work to her. There was a young man in Fentown called
David Brown, a comely young fellow, belonging to one of the richer
families of the place. He was good-natured, and an athlete; he had of
late fallen into the habit of dropping in frequently to drink Ann's
beer. She felt no doubt that Christa was his attraction. Some weeks
before he had boasted that he had found the bed of a creek which made
its way through the drowned forest, and that by it he had paddled his
canoe through the marsh that