re no tears now in her eyes. She was forcing them back and she tried
to smile as she said, "You are very kind, and I think I understand what
you want, and here by this grave I promise all you ask, and will do my
best--my very best."

Her lips began to quiver and her voice to break, for the visit from
which she had expected so much had proved a blank, and her high hopes
were dead as the woman by whose grave she stood. She had folded her
hands one over the other upon the top rail of the fence, and her
companion looked at them and thought how small they were and shapely,
too, although brown with the work she had to do when Jake and Mandy Ann
were both gone and Sonsie came only at meal times. He was not a brute.
He was simply a proud, cold, selfish man, whose will had seldom been
crossed, and who found himself in a tight place from which he could not
wholly extricate himself. He was sorry for Eudora, for he guessed how
desolate she would be when he was gone, and there was nothing left but
that home in the clearing, with old granny and Mandy Ann. He had not
seen Jake, of whom Eudora now spoke, saying, "Our house never seemed so
poor to me till I seen you in it. It will be better when Jake comes, for
he is to fix it up--he knows how."

It was the only excuse she had made, and she did it falteringly, while
her companion's heart rose up in his throat and made him very
uncomfortable, as he thought of Jake and Mandy Ann caring for this girl,
while his income was larger than he could spend. It had not occurred to
him to offer her money till that moment, and he did not know now that
she would take it. Turning his back to her as if looking at something
across the road, he counted a roll of bills, and turning back took one
of the little brown hands resting on the rail in his and pressed the
roll into it. Just for an instant the slim fingers held fast to his
hand--then, as she felt the bills and saw what they were, she drew back
and dropped them upon the sand.

"I can't; no, I can't," she said, when he urged them upon her, telling
her it was his right to give and hers to take.

As usual his will prevailed, and when at last he said good-by and walked
rapidly towards the river, while she went slowly through the woods and
across the clearing to the log-house, where Mandy Ann was having a
frightful time getting ole Miss to bed, she had in her possession more
money than Jake would earn in months.

"I would send it all back," she thoug