went home
to dinner. She looked back at him as the car swept past, but he did
not seem to see her. He walked with an air of seeing nothing,
covering the ground like an old dog with some patient, dumb end in
view, heeding nothing by the way. It puzzled her also that her
father had come out of Lloyd's instead of McGuire's, where he had
been employed all summer. Ellen, after she reached home, watched
anxiously for her father to come into the yard, but she did not see
him. She assisted about the dinner, which was a little extra on
account of the dressmaker, and all the time she glanced with covert
anxiety at the window, but her father did not pass it. Finally, when
she went out to the pump for a pitcher of water, she set the pitcher
down, and sped to the orchard like a wild thing. A suspicion had
seized her that her father was there.

Sure enough, there he was, but instead of lying face down on the
grass, as he had done before, he was sitting back against a tree. He
had the air of having settled into such a long lease of despair that
he had sought the most comfortable position for it. His face was
ghastly. He looked at Ellen as she drew near, and opened his mouth
as if to speak, but instead he only caught his breath. He stared
hard at her, then he closed his eyes as if not to see her, and
motioned her away with one hand with an inarticulate noise in his
throat.

But Ellen sat down beside him. She caught his two hands and looked
at him. "Father, look at me," said she, and Andrew opened his eyes.
The expression in them was dreadful, compounded of shame and despair
and dread, but the girl's met them with a sort of glad triumph and
strength of love. "Now look here, father," she said, "you tell me
all about it. I didn't want to know last night. Now I want to know.
What is the matter?"

Andrew continued to look at her, then all at once he spoke with a
kind of hoarse shout. "I'm discharged! I'm discharged," he said,
"from McGuire's; they've got a boy who can move faster in my
place--a boy for less pay, who can move faster. I hurried over to
Lloyd's to see if they would take me on again; I've always thought I
should get back into Lloyd's, and I saw the foreman, and he told me
to my face that I was too old, that they wanted younger men. And I
went into the office to see Lloyd, pushed past the foreman, with him
damning me, and I saw Lloyd."

"Was young Mr. Lloyd there?" asked Ellen, with white lips.

"No; I guess he had gone