he passed Morley he seemed to note, for the first time in his life,
her fantastic beauty. And then Morley stared after her--she looked
like _his_ mother! With the thought a blush of shame rose to his thin,
sallow face.

His mother! Between his mother and him lay a black abyss. What right
had anything, holding part in that shadow, to look like his mother? He
arose and almost snatched from the child the pail she had brought in.

"Hyar!" he cried, "let me take that, you're slopping it over the floor.
Whar's yo' brother?"

With this Mary Morley turned from her task with hot, blazing face? She
had been handsome once--but the fleeting beauty was gone.

"Sho'! _whar's_ that blessed son of yours?" Mary screamed. "You better
go and find out. Do you know what the brat has been doing all these
years? Years, I say! While we-all have been slaving and starving he's
been saving up; cheating us-all out of his earnings. Eating us-all out
of house and home while he--saved and glutted!"

Martin stared at the woman as if she were speaking a foreign language.

"Who--tole yo?" he asked vaguely, hoping by the question to clarify the
moment's confusion.

"Molly, she don' keep her eye on him fo' years! It's under a stone
beyond the Branch--dollars and dollars while we-all done without."

"Whar did he--get it?"

"He only gave us part of what he earned--he made us-all fools while he
hid the rest."

This was too bewildering for Martin and he looked helplessly at the
girl who had been informer. The bold little face of Molly confronted
him with something like fear in it.

"He'll sho' kill me!" she whined, "him and that--that Cynthia Walden."

This latter betrayal was new to Mary Morley and she came forward
angrily.

"None of your lying!" she commanded--"nobody's going to hurt you so
long as you tell the truth. What has the Walden girl got to do with
the stolen money?"

"She watched it! She licked me right smart once because I--tried to
find out how much there was. She told me she'd kill me sho' if I let
on and I ain't till to-day when ma said she'd send me down to Miss
Lowe's to larn things if she only had money to buy me some shoes. Why
should Sandy have that money and me no shoes?"

Why he yearned to lay the lash on the girl before him, Martin could not
tell, but she filled him with savage anger. She looked so mean, so
hard and--young! Then he tried to think it was Sandy with whom he was
angered. He had left