ently without speaking. The Judge drew nearer "Lila--come--that's a
good girl--here, take the money. Oh Lila, Lila," he cried, "won't you
take it for Papa--won't you, my little girl?"

The child looked up at him with shy frightened eyes, and suddenly she
put down her head and ran past him. He tried to hold her--to put the
silver into her hand, but she shrank away and dropped the coin before
him.

"Shy child, Judge--very shy. Emma let her gather the eggs this morning,
she loves to hunt eggs," chuckled the Captain, "and she went to the loft
just before you came in. I clean forgot she hadn't come down."

The Captain went on with his work.

"I suppose, Cap," said Van Dorn quietly, "she heard more or less of what
I said." The Captain nodded.

"How much did she understand?" the Judge asked.

"More'n you'd think, Judge--more'n you'd think. But," added Captain
Morton after a pause, "I know the little skite like a top, Judge--and
there's one thing about her: She's a loyal little body. She'll never
tell; you needn't be worrying about that."

The Judge sighed and added sadly: "It wasn't that, Cap--it was--" But
the Judge left his sentence in the air. The mending was done. The Judge
paid the old man and gave him a dollar more than he asked, and went
chugging off in a cloud of smoke, while the Captain, thinking over what
the Judge had said, sighed, shook his head, and bending over his work,
cackled in an undertone, snatches of a tune that told of a land that is
fairer than day. He had put together three sprockets and was working on
the fourth when he looked up and saw his daughter Emma sitting on the
box that the Judge had vacated. The Captain put his hand to his back and
stood up, looking at his eldest daughter with loving pride.

"Emma," he said at length, "Judge Tom says women are like God." He stood
near her and smoothed her hair, and patted her cheek as he pressed her
head against his side. "I guess he's right--eh? Lila was in the loft
getting eggs and she overheard a lot of his fool talk." The daughter
made no reply. The Captain worked on and finally said: "It kind of hit
Tom hard to have Lila hear him; took the tuck out of him, eh?"

Emma still waited. "My dear, the more I know of women the better I think
of God, and the surer I am of God, the better I think of women--what
say?" He sat on the box beside her and took her hand in his hard,
cracked, grimy hand, "'Y gory, girl, I tell you, give me a line on a
man's idea