k with the light
hand of experience that delighted the old housekeeper. It was so good
to feel a roof over her head, and to feel that she was earning her
right to it.

Supper had been cooked, the table laid and everything was in readiness
for the family meal, but the old clock wanted five minutes of the hour;
the girl came out into the glowing sunset to draw a pail of water from
the old well, but paused to enjoy the scene. Purple, gold and crimson
was the mantle of the departing day; and all her crushed and hopeless
youth rose, cheered by its glory.

"Thank God," she murmured fervently, "at last I have found a refuge. I
am beginning life again. The shadow of the old one will rest on me
forever, but time and work, the cure for every grief, will cure me."

Her eyes had been turned toward the west, where the day was going out
in such a riot of splendor, and she had not noticed the man who entered
the gate and was making his way toward her, flicking his boots with his
riding crop as he walked.

She turned suddenly at the sound of steps on the gravel; in the
gathering darkness neither could see nor recognize the other till they
were face to face.

The woman's face blanched, she stifled an exclamation of horror and
stared at him.

"You! you here!"

It was Lennox Sanderson, and the sight of him, so suddenly, in this
out-of-the-way place, made her reel, almost fainting against the
well-curb.

He grabbed her arm and shook her roughly, and said, "What are you doing
here, in this place?"

"I am trying to earn my living. Go, go," she whispered.

"Do you think I came here after you?" he sneered. "I've come to see
the Squire." All the selfishness and cowardice latent in Sanderson's
character were reflected in his face, at that moment, destroying its
natural symmetry, disfiguring it with tell-tale lines, and showing him
at his par value--a weak, contemptible libertine, brought to bay.

This meeting with his victim after all these long months of silence, in
this remote place, deprived him, momentarily, of his customary poise
and equilibrium. Why was she here? Would she denounce him to these
people? What effect would it have? were some of the questions that
whirled through his brain as they stood together in the gathering
twilight.

But the shrinking look in her eyes allayed his fears. He read terror
in every line of her quivering figure, and in the frantic way she clung
to the well-curb to increase the space