otions of Ephraim's support.

One August day Mrs. Croom drove with her husband to a distant funeral.

In the afternoon when the sunshine was falling upon the fields of maize,
when the wind was busy setting their ribbon-like leaves flapping, and
rocking the tree-tops, Ephraim Croom was disturbed in his private room
by the blustering entrance of Susannah.

The room was an attic; the windows of the gable looked west; slanting
windows in the shingle roof looked north and south. The room was large
and square, spare of furniture, lined with books. At a square table in
the centre sat Ephraim.

When Susannah entered a gust of wind came with her. The handkerchief
folded across her bosom was blown awry. Her sun-bonnet had slipped back
upon her neck; her ringlets were tossed.

"Cousin Ephraim, my aunt has gone; come out and play with me." Then she
added more disconsolately, "I am lonely; I want you to talk to me,
cousin."

The gust had lifted Ephraim's papers and shed them upon the floor. He
looked down at them without moving. Life in a world of thoughts in which
his fellows took no interest, had produced in him a singularly
undemonstrative manner.

Susannah's red lips were pouting. "Come, cousin, I am so tired of
myself."

But Ephraim had been privately accused of amative emotions. Offended
with his mother, mortified he knew not why, uncertain of his own
feeling, as scholars are apt to be, he had no wish then but to retire.

"I am too busy, Susianne."

"Then I will go alone; I will go for a long, long walk by myself." She
gave her foot a defiant stamp upon the floor.

He looked out of his windows north and south; safer district could not
be. "I do not think it will rain," he said.

A suspicion of laughter was lurking in his clear quiet eyes, which were
framed in heavy brown eyebrows and thick lashes. Nature, who had stinted
this man in physical strength, had fitted him out fairly well as to
figure and feature.

Susannah, vexed at his indifference, but fearing that he would retract
his unexpected permission, was again in the draught of the open door.

"Perhaps I will walk away, away into the woods and never come back; what
then?"

"Indians," suggested he, "or starvation, or perhaps wolves, Susianne."

"But I love you for not forbidding me to go, cousin Ephraim."

The smile that repaid him for his indulgence comforted him for an hour;
then a storm arose.

In the meantime Susannah had walked far. A squatter's