ance interest; yet the very fact
that she lived beneath the roof of such an old reprobate constituted a
barrier which many of the less established neighbors would not venture
to cross. Just, or unjust, this had made her shunned--at least, not
sought; and as she grew into young womanhood, she also grew into a life
of solitude. The native swains did not approach because they were afraid
of Tom, and girl friends were denied by a far more unrelenting
danger--compromise.

This particular spring, however, two events occurred which were vitally
affecting her life. The first, when she stopped Jane in the road and
asked if she might come to school. From that time forth the teacher
began to see many things which others had not given themselves the
opportunity to see, and her previous long-distance interest merged with
the girl's spirit of secret envy into a companionship--bounded for the
most part by school hours, yet a companionship, nevertheless.

Not until then was there exposed a lovelier side of character, doubtless
formed in early childhood with her father, the country parson. Jane
learned of the mutual adoration which had existed between these two,
and, when he had died, how death seemed also to lay a hand upon her
budding hopes of life and future. The mother's background she found more
difficult to place, and the only glimpse she could get of it was through
Nancy's possession of four books left from that forlorn woman's more
forlorn estate: the Bible, Swinburne's poems, "Adam Bede" and "Household
Hints." That she had been superior to Tom might be accepted without
question, and why she married him was simply one of those anomalies
which makes our neighbors interesting.

But the seed implanted by the father, a man of honest impulses, remained
somewhere the girl's consciousness--latent, nearly parched by the
brutality of subsequent environments; until Jane had begun to moisten it
with encouragement, and now it was budding. On the other hand, she had
seen in Nancy tendencies of less promise: a physical desire to be away
from the frame house by the roadside, and a character--not entirely
weak, but irresolute--easing its sense of obligation by the devil's
insidious argument of poverty; also, that the recent application to
perfect her modest learning was in parallel with an unexpressed hope of
independence in the cities. Frequently--and invariably after nights when
old Tom was on his sprees--Jane had found her pathetically nea