eyes a moment and then clasped her knees again.

"I don't like to talk about family matters."

"Oh, I----"

And then, gently, she added,

"I never talk about them to any one."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Peter, aware of the undercurrent of sadness in her
voice. "I didn't know that there was anything painful to you----"

"I didn't know it myself, until you played it to me, just now, the piece
with the sad, low voices, under the melody. It was like somebody dead
speakin' to me. I can't talk about the things I feel like that."

"Don't then----Forgive me for asking."

He laid his fingers softly over hers. She withdrew her hand quickly, but
the look that she turned him found his face sober, his dark eyes warm
with sympathy. And then with a swift inconsequential impulse born of
Peter's recantation,

"I don't s'pose there's any reason why I shouldn't tell you," she said
more easily. "Everybody around here knows about me--about us. Aunt
Tillie and I haven't lived here always. She brought me here when I was a
child."

She paused again and Peter remained silent, watching her intently. As
she glanced up at him, something in the expression of his face gave her
courage to go on.

"Father's dead. His name was Ben Cameron. He came of nice people," she
faltered. "But he--he was no good. We lived up near New Lisbon. He used
to get drunk on 'Jersey Lightnin'' and tear loose. He was all right
between whiles--farmin'--but whisky made him crazy, and then--then he
would come home and beat us up."

"Horrible!"

"It was. I was too little to know much, but Aunt Tillie's husband came
at last and there was a terrible fight. Uncle Will was hurt--hurt so
bad--cut with a knife--that he never was the same again. And my--my
father went away cursing us all. Then my mother died--Uncle Will
too--and Aunt Tillie and I came down here to live. That's all. Not much
to be proud of," she finished ruefully.

Peter was silent. It was a harrowing, sordid story of primitive passion.
He was very sorry for her.

Beth made an abrupt graceful movement of an arm across her brows, as
though to wipe out the memory.

"I don't know why I've told you," she said. "I never speak of this to
any one."

"I'm so sorry."

He meant it. And Beth knew that he did.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PLACARD

The look that she had given him showed her sense of his sympathy. So he
ventured,

"Did you hear from your father before he died?"

"Aunt Tillie did,--once. T