it over and over. He swore it.

It is true he was not entirely free from that sickening, sour,
accursed smell with which she had associated him all her life. But
that he was himself, that he was making an earnest effort, she knew
by his neatly brushed clothes, his clean linen, his freshly shaved
face, his whole attire which betokened the former gentleman.

"How handsome he must have been when he was once a Conway!" thought
Helen.

He kissed his daughters at the breakfast table. He chatted with them,
and though he said nothing about it, even Lily knew that he had
resolved to reform.

After breakfast Helen left him, with Lily sitting on her father's
lap, her face bright with the sunshine of it:

"If papa would always be like this"--and she patted his cheek.

Conway started. The very intonation of her voice, her gesture, was of
the long dead mother.

Tears came to his eyes. He kissed her: "Never again, little daughter,
will I take another drop."

She looked at him seriously: "Say with God's help--" she said simply.
"Mammy Maria said it won't count unless you say that."

Conway smiled. "I will do it my own self."

But Lily only shook her head in a motherly, scolding way.

"With God's help, then," he said.

Never was an Autumn morning more beautiful to Helen as she walked
across the fields to the mill. She had learned a nearer way, one
which lay across hill and field. The path ran through farms, chiefly
The Gaffs, and cut across the hills and meadow land. Through little
dells, amid fragrant groves of sweet gum and maples, their beautiful
many-colored leaves now scattered in rich profusion around. Then down
little hollows where the brooks sputtered and frothed and foamed
along, the sun all the time darting in and out, as the waters ran
first in sunshine and then in shadow. And above, the winds were so
still, that the jumping of the squirrel in the hickories made the
only noise among the leaves which still clung to the boughs.

All so beautiful, and never had Helen been so happy.

She was earning a living--she was saving Lily from the mill and her
father from temptation.

Her path wound along an old field and plunged into scrub cedar and
glady rocks. A covey of quail sprang up before her and she screamed,
frightened at the sudden thunder of their wings.

Then the path ran through a sedge field, white with the tall silvered
panicled-leaves of the life-everlasting.

Beyond her she saw the smoke-stack of the