becoming a poor white, and learn
to overcome the limitations of her birth, and Crothers seemed her only
chance. On the long rides to and from the factory she thought often of
her poor mother and wondered about her bad father. She wished she had
learned more about them while Ann Walden was capable of telling her.
The time was past now when the mistress of Stoneledge could impart any
reliable information to the girl. When the weather permitted the old
woman paced the upper balcony crooning to the hills, and as cold and
storm shut her inside she seemed only happy in the library. So Sally
Taber, reinforced by the money which supposedly she so miraculously had
saved, had the room made habitable. Mason Hope was coaxed into giving
some of his valuable time to the repairing and by mid-winter the place
was comfortable.

"Ole miss is jes' a plain moon-chile now," Sally confided to Marcia
Lowe at one of their private conferences; "it's right silly to oppose
her."

"Yes, give her everything you can, Sally, and oh! if she ever has
flashes of reason get her to talk and--remember what she says!"

"Deed and deed I will," promised Sally. "And if she ever do get her
wits back it will be in dat ole libr'y-room. She acts right human thar
at times."

Marcia Lowe was sorely puzzled about Cynthia those days. If she were
only sure that Ann Walden would never recover her reason she would take
her chances with the girl and plead Theodore Starr's cause, but with no
actual proof, and with Ann Walden's evident past instruction to
Cynthia, she hesitated to make her own claims. Then, too, there were
times when doubt rose in her mind, not as to her uncle, but Cynthia's
parentage. There might never have been a child born to Queenie Walden.
The Hollow story of adoption might be true after all. That would have
accounted for old Miss Walden's bitter resentment. It was all very
difficult and confusing, but in the meantime she could love the girl,
and do, indirectly, for her what personally she could not.

Oftener and oftener the little doctor went to the church by The Way and
"sat with Uncle Theodore," as she put it. It was less lonely there;
the store was near by and the passers-by were becoming more friendly.
Occasionally they dropped in. Tod Greeley and old Townley more than
the others, and chatted sociably. Marcia Lowe had much to be grateful
for, and when, one morning two weeks after Morley had been pronounced
cured by his faithf