name; and maybe if you lost it somebody might bring
it back to you."

Johnnie had turned away and faltered on a few paces in a daze of
humiliation and misery.

"Sis' Johnnie--oh, Sis' Johnnie!" Pony called after her, flourishing the
umbrella. "Look what Mr. Stoddard give Milo and me." Then, in sudden
consternation as Milo caught his elbow, he whirled and offered voluble
thanks. "I'm a goin' to earn a whole lot of money and pay back the
trouble I am to my folks," he confided to Gray, hastily. "I didn't know
I was such a bad feller till I came down to the Settlement. Looks like I
cain't noways behave. But I'm goin' to earn a big heap of money, an' buy
things for Milo an' maw an' the girls. Only now they take all I can earn
away from me."

There was a warning call from Johnnie, ahead in the dusk somewhere; and
the little fellow scuttled away toward the Victory and a night of work.

Spring came late that year, and after it had given a hint of relieving
the misery of the poor, there followed an Easter storm which covered all
the new-made gardens with sleet and sent people shivering back to their
winter wear. Deanie had been growing very thin, and the red on her
cheeks was a round spot of scarlet. Laurella lay all day and far into
the night on her pallet of quilts before the big fire in the front room,
spent, inert, staring at the ceiling, entertaining God knows what guests
of terror and remorse. Nothing distressing must be brought to her.
Coming home from work once at dusk, Johnnie found the two little girls
on the porch, Deanie crying and Lissy trying to comfort her.

"I thest cain't go to that old mill to-night, Sis' Johnnie," the little
one pleaded. "Looks like I thest cain't."

"I could tell Mr. Reardon, and he'd put a substitute on to tend her
frames," Lissy spoke up eagerly. "You ask Pap Himes will he let us do
that, Sis' Johnnie."

Johnnie went past her mother, who appeared to be dozing, and into the
dining room, where Himes was. He had promised to do some night work,
setting up new machines at the Victory, and he was in that uncertain
humour which the prospect of work always produced. Gideon Himes was an
old man, pestered, as he himself would have put it, by the mysterious
illness of his young wife, fretted by the presence of the children, no
doubt in a measure because he felt himself to be doing an ill part by
them. His grumpy silence of other days, his sardonic humour, gave place
to hypochondriac complaini