ace transfigured by its new tenderness, Hugh bent over the child
in his arms. Pete held his tumult of curiosity, of interest, in leash.
He could hear his heart pounding.

"You're safe now, and warm," Hugh was murmuring. "No need to be scared,
no need. I'll take care of you. Go to sleep. I'm strong enough to keep
off anything. You're safe and snug as a little bird in its nest. That's
right. Go to sleep."

Pete's blue eyes dwelt on this amazing spectacle with curious wonder.
This was a Hugh he had never seen before. For the first time in fifteen
years, he realized, the man had forgotten himself.

CHAPTER IV

To Hugh Garth the girl told her story at last. She seemed to realize
only dimly that there were two other living beings in this house, to
her a house of darkness peopled only by voices--Pete's modest, rare boy
speeches, Bella's brief, smothered statements. The great music of Hugh's
utterance must indeed have filled her narrowed world. So it was to him
she turned--he was always near her, sitting on the pelt beside the chair
to which, after a day and night in Bella's bed, she was helped.

She had a charming fashion of speech, rather slow motions of her lips,
which had some difficulty with "r" and "s," a difficulty which she
evidently struggled against conscientiously, and as she talked, she
gesticulated with her slim little hands. She was a touching thing
sitting there in Hugh's carved throne--he an abdicated monarch at her
feet, knee in hand, grizzled head tilted back, hazel eyes raised to her
and filled with adoration.

"I am called Sylvie Doone," she said with that quaint struggle over
the "S." "I was always miserable at home." She gave the quick sigh of
a child. "You see, my father died when I was very little, and then my
mother married again. We lived in the grimmest little town, hardly
more than a dozen houses, beside a stream, up in Massachusetts--farming
country, but poor farming, hard farming, the kind that twists the men
with rheumatism, and makes the women all pinched and worn. Mother
was like that. She died when I was thirteen. You see--there I was, so
queerly fixed. I had to live with Mr. Pynche--there was no other home
for me anywhere. And he kind of resented it. He had enough money not
to need me for work--a sister of his did the housework better than I
could--and yet he was poor enough to hate having to feed me and pay for
my clothes. I was always feeling in the way, and a burden. There was