eed to upset existing arrangements."

Mr. Selincourt nodded his head thoughtfully, then he answered: "I
must say I think you have done wisely; although, of course, it is
against my own interest to admit it, because I wanted to buy. But
it is a very hard life for a girl."

"It will be easier in a few years, when Miles grows up; and he gets
bigger and more capable every day. Oh, I shall have a very easy
time, I can assure you, when my brother is a man!" she said, with a
laugh.

"I trust you will, and a good time too, for I am sure that no girl
ever deserved it more than you do," he replied warmly. Then he
went on: "I had a very hard time myself when I was a young man, an
experience so cruelly hard and wearing that sometimes I wonder that
I did not lose faith and hope entirely."

"But don't you think that faith and hope are given to us in
proportion to our need of them?" asked Katherine, a little
unsteadily. Her heart was beating with painful throbs, for she
guessed only too well to what period of his life Mr. Selincourt was
referring.

"Perhaps so. Yes, indeed I think it must be so, otherwise I don't
see how I could have pulled through. I have recalled a good deal
about that time since I have been here at Roaring Water Portage,
and have seen how you have had to work, and to sacrifice yourself
for the good of others; and I have often thought that I should like
to tell you the story of my struggle. Would you care to hear it?"

"Yes, very much," Katherine answered faintly, although, much as she
wished to know all about it, she dreaded hearing the story of her
father's wrong-doing told by other lips than his own.

"When I was a very young man I was clerk in a Bristol business
house, taking a good salary, and, as I believed, with an
unblemished character. My father was dependent on me, and two
young sisters, and I was rather proud of being, as it were, the
keystone of the home. Then one day an old friend of my father's
came to see me, and paid me fifty pounds, which he said he had owed
to my father for twenty years--a gambling debt. He begged and
implored me to say no word about it to anyone, especially to my
father."

"Why not, if it was your father's debt?" asked Katherine, who was
keenly interested.

"Because my father would not have taken it, although twenty years
before he had paid the fifty pounds out of his own pocket, to save
this friend of his from exposure and ruin. At first I was disposed
no