r's lips. Surely his child had spoken the truth. He
himself had almost forgotten he had a girl; that she was the only
living creature who had a call upon the slender thread of his life.
Had he lived differently, the girl in front of him would have been
watching him for some other reason than curiosity.

"That's why I'm looking at you, sir," she explained. "If any one on
the hills'd say, 'How's your father looking, Jinnie?' if I hadn't
looked at you sharp, sir, how'd I know?"

She sighed as her eyes roved the length of the man once more. The
ashes in the grate were no grayer than his face.

"You're awful thin and white," she observed.

"I'm sick," replied Singleton in excuse.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" answered Virginia.

"You're quite grown up now," remarked the man presently, with a
meditative air.

"Oh, yes, sir!" she agreed. "I'm a woman now. I'm fifteen years old."

"I see! Well, well, you _are_ quite grown up! I heard you playing just
now. Where did you ever learn such music?"

Jinnie placed her hand on her heart. "I got it out of here, sir," she
replied simply.

Involuntarily Singleton straightened his rounded shoulders, and a
smile touched the corners of his mouth. Even his own desperate
condition for the moment was erased from his mind in the pride he felt
in his daughter. Then over him swept a great regret. He had missed
more than he had gained in his travels abroad, in not living with and
for the little creature before him.

Her eyes were filled with contemplation; then the lovely face, in its
exquisite purity, saddened for a moment.

"Matty isn't going to take me across her knee never any more," she
vouchsafed, a smile breaking like a ray of sunshine.

The blouse slipped away from her slender throat, and she made a
picture, vivid and beautiful. The fatherhood within Thomas Singleton
bounded in appreciation as he contemplated his daughter for a short
space, measuring accurately the worth within her. He caught the
wonderful appeal in the violet eyes, and wished to live. God, how he
wanted to live! He would! He would! It meant gathering his supremest
strength, to be put forth in efforts of mere existing. Something out
of an unknown somewhere, brought to him through the stormy, wonderful
music he had heard, made the longing to live so vehement that it hurt.
Then the horror of Virginia's words drifted through his tortured
brain.

"What?" he ejaculated.

"Now I'm fifteen," explained the girl, "I get a wo