ht of Lisbeth through
the window. She was standing with her back towards the inner door her
moth-like dress blending oddly with the pallor of her cheeks, the
smudgy glow of the lamp light laying little warm patches on her hair.
But it was her eyes, wide and dark, that stopped me. There was pain in
them, and purport, a certain fierce intention, that made me wonder if I
could not serve her better where I was. And, as I waited, her voice
seeped thinly through the boarding.

"I don't believe it."--Her voice came quietly, almost without
intonation. "Tom Breighton wouldn't be his friend then.--They're both
fine and straight--and--"

"They are, are they?" he jeered. "Ye've learned to tell such things out
here in th' country, I suppose--"

"There are things," she retorted, "I've learned."

He began drawling his words again, as he always did when he had got
himself under control.

"I suppose ye're _insinuatin'_ ye don't like it here--don't like what
ye're pore ol' Father c'n do fur ye?"

Her look of contempt would have cut short another man.

"Ye--wantta--go?" he finished.

She nodded mutely. And at that he flared at her terribly.

"It's like ye," he shouted, "like yere mother, like all the Perkinses.
Word-breakers! cowards! _shirkers!_"

The words seared. The careful articulation of the afternoon was gone.

"Promised--if I sent ye to school, ye'd stay here winters to look after
ye're pore ol' Father--didn't ye?" He looked at her through narrow,
reddish lids, where she had backed against the door. "Didn't ye?" he
repeated. "But soon's he's done fur--soon's his _money's gone_--"

"Stop!" she cried. "_Stop i_--" Her breath caught.

He stared at her, the words shaken from him by the sheer force of her.
She had not moved, but, somehow, as she stood there against the
unvarnished door facing him, fists at her side, eyes brilliant, she
appeared to tower over him.

"I'll stay," she was saying in a queer, fierce monotone, "I'll stay here
this winter anyhow if I freeze for it! I'll scrub and cook and haul wood
for ye till I've paid ye back--_paid ye_," she repeated more softly,
"till no one can say the Perkinses don't keep their word! And then--in
the spring--I'm going--it'll be for good--. _For always_," she added,
and turned limply towards the door.

To my surprise he sank heavily into the rickety chair by the stove.

"Go then," he muttered. "It's all I c'ld expect."

The door closed on her and still he sat there be