invisible shield, and moving
with a low glide of secrecy, he had gained the yard between the two
houses, the yard where the three cherry-trees stood, he heard
Fanny's high, insistent voice calling him, and knew that it was all
over. Fanny had her head thrust out of her bedroom window. "Andrew!
Andrew!" she called.

Andrew stopped. "What is it?" he asked, in a gruff voice. He felt at
that moment savage with her and with fate. He felt like some
badgered animal beneath the claws and teeth of petty enemies which
were yet sufficient to do him to death. He felt that retreat and
defence were alike impossible and inglorious. He was aware of a
monstrous impatience with it all, which was fairly blasphemy. "What
is it?" he said, and Fanny realized that something was wrong.

"Come here, Andrew Brewster," she said, from the bedroom window, and
Andrew pressed close to the window through a growth of sweetbrier
which rasped his hands and sent up a sweet fragrance in his face.
Andrew tore away the clinging vines angrily.

"Well, what is it?" he said again.

"Don't spoil that bush, Ellen sets a lot by it," said Fanny. "What
makes you act so, Andrew Brewster?" Then she lowered her voice.
"She wants to know if she can have her pay to-night," she whispered.

"I 'ain't got a cent," replied Andrew, in a dogged, breathless
voice.

"You 'ain't been to the bank to-day, then?"

"No, I 'ain't."

Fanny still suspected nothing. She was, in fact, angry with the
dressmaker for insisting upon her pay in such a fashion. "I never
heard of such a thing as her wantin' to be paid every night," she
whispered, angrily, "and I'd tell her so, if I wasn't afraid she'd
think we couldn't pay her. I'd never have had her; I'd had Miss
Patch, if I'd know she'd do such a mean thing, but, as it is, I
don't know what to do. I 'ain't got but a dollar and seventy-three
cents by me. You 'ain't got enough to make it up?"

"No, I 'ain't."

"Well, all is, I've got to tell her that it ain't convenient for me
to pay her to-night, and she shall have it all together to-morrow
night, and to-morrow you'll have to go to the bank and take out the
money, Andrew. Don't forget it."

"Well," said Andrew.

Fanny retreated, and he heard her high voice explaining to Miss
Higgins. He tore his way through the clinging sweetbrier bushes and
ran with an unsteady, desperate gait down to the orchard behind his
mother's home, and flung himself at full length in the dewy grass
u