o, but after you've
given your eight hours daily to the mills. Sixteen thousand! Mark
me, young man, you'll pay it back through the nose, every dollar of
it!"

"I owe you nothing." Pain was stabbing him, now here, now there;
pain was real enough; but he could not establish as a fact in his
throbbing brain the presence of his aunt in the doorway. "I owe you
nothing," he repeated, dully.

"Hoity-toity! You owe me sixteen thousand dollars. They were very
nice about it, in memory of your father. They telephoned that you
had absconded with ten thousand, and that if I would make good the
loss within twenty-four hours, they would not prosecute. I sent my
check for ten thousand; and it has cost me six thousand to find
you. I should say that you owed me considerable."

Still his brain refused to assimilate the news or to deduce the
tremendous importance of it.

"You are Ruth?"

"Yes," said Ruth, stirred by anger and bitterness and astonishment.
This, then, was the woman from whom Hoddy would not have accepted a
cup of water.

"Come here," said the petticoated tyrant. Ruth obeyed, not
willingly, but because there was something hypnotic in the
authoritative tone. "Put your arms about me." Ruth did so, but
without any particular fervour. "Kiss me." Ruth slightly brushed
the withered cheek. The aunt laughed. "Love me, love my dog!
Because I've scolded him and told him a few truths, you are ice to
me. Not afraid of me, either."

"No," said Ruth, pulling back.

But the aunt seized her in her arms and rocked with her. "A miserly
old woman. Well, I've had to be. All my life I've had to fight
human wolves to hold what I have. So I've grown hard--outside.
What's all this about, anyhow? You. Far away there was the one
woman for this boy of mine--some human being who would understand
the dear fool better than all the rest of the world. But God did
not put you next door. He decided that Hoddy should pay a colossal
price for the Dawn Pearl--shame, loneliness, torment, for only
through these agencies would he learn your worth. The fibre of his
soul had to be tested, queerly, to make him worthy of you. Through
fire and water, through penury and pestilence, your hand will
always be on his shoulder. McClintock wrote me about you; but all I
needed was the sight of your face as it was a moment gone."

Gently she thrust Ruth aside. Ruth's eyes were wet, but she saw
light everywhere: the room was filled with celestial aura.

The aunt