ns from whom Penn bought the land for his
village of Philadelphia, had possessed culture and social rank, if no
money, for centuries. Miss Fleming found for herself a lodging-place under
their roof, with very much the motive of the low-born blackbird burrowing
in the high, bare nest of the osprey.

She was on her way to the Academy now, and touched her hat jauntily and
shook loose her flowing-sleeve as she said good-bye with a lingering look
at the captain, to which he did not reply.

The cold ague of despair was on him: he combed his grizzled beard with his
fingers, stared at the carpet and saw nobody. "Yes, I ought to have rented
two small rooms up town, and found work that would pay. I'll do it now,"
he grumbled.

Jane had uncovered a long table heaped with tools, glue-pots,
drawing-materials, models in wood, in paper, in clay, with others finely
draughted on large sheets of Bristol board. The captain preserved his
failures as sacredly as a Chinese the dead bodies of his ancestors. She
took up one of these models and studied it thoughtfully: "Very well,
father. I could go on with the business, I suppose."

The captain burst into a laugh: "Absurd! Though," relapsing into anxiety,
"this is, as you say, really my business. But I could easily find a place
as professor of Latin and Greek in some Western college which would
support us."

"Now, I don't quite understand the action of this screw, A, B,"
meditatively. "It interferes with the force of the piston, in my
judgment."

"Impossible!" hurrying over to the table. "I'll explain that in a moment,
Jane. Why, that screw is the finest idea in the machine. It's the meaning,
in fact. It all hinges on that."

In five minutes his smoking-cap was pushed back, his spectacles on his
hooked nose, and he was lost in the depths of valves, gauges and levers.

Jane took the place of a dozen lost hands. She made the models, she
draughted them, she worked with carpenter's tools, needles, pencils,
clay, by turns, and was both swift and skillful. She had been at this
daily work, indeed, since the time her father had lost his arm. Now and
then, being really nothing but a child in years, she clasped her hands
over her head and yawned when he was not looking, or, when she was sent to
the fire for the glue, sat down on the floor and began a rough-and-tumble
romp with the dog, or while she was at work, sang scraps of songs into
which the captain threw a fine rolling bass.

The mornin