They all turned, and William came up, pale and breathing hard. "What did you pay him?" he asked of Thomas Payne.

"See here, William, we all know you had nothing to do with it,"

Thomas cried out.

"What did you pay him?" William repeated, in a stern gasp.

"It's all right."

"You tell me what you paid him."

Thomas Payne blushed all over his handsome boyish face. He half whispered the amount to William, although the others knew it as well as he.

William pulled out his purse, and counted out some money with trembling fingers. "Take it, for God's sake!" said he, and Thomas Payne took it. "We all know that you knew nothing about it," he said again. The others chimed in with eager assent, but William gave his head a shake, as if he shook off water, and broke away from them all, and pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that it seemed as if he trod on it at every step.

A voice was crying out behind him, but he never heeded. There were light, hurrying steps after him, and a soft flutter of girlish skirts, but he never looked away from his own self until Rebecca touched his arm. Then he looked around with a start and a great blush, and jerked his arm away.

But Rebecca followed him up quite boldly, and caught his arm again, and looked up in his face. "Don't you feel bad," said she; "don't you feel bad. You aren't to blame."

"Isn't he my father?"

"You aren't to blame for that."

"Disgrace comes without blame," said William, and he moved on.

Rebecca kept close to his side, clinging to his arm. "It's your father's way," said she. "He's honest, anyway. Nobody can say he isn't honest."

"It depends upon what you call honest," William said, bitterly.

"You'd better run back, Rebecca. You don't want them to think you're going with me, and they will. I'm disgraced, and so is Rose. You'd better run back."

Rebecca stopped, and he did also. She looked up in his face; her mouth was quivering with a kind of helpless shame, but her eyes were full of womanly courage and steadfastness. "William," said she, "I ran away in the face and eyes of them all to comfort you. They saw me, and they can see me now, but I don't care. And I don't care if you see me; I always have cared, but I don't now. I have always been terribly afraid lest you should think I was running after you, but I ain't afraid now. Don't you feel bad, William. That's all I care about. Don't you feel bad; nobody is going to think any less of you.

I don't; I think more."

William looked down at her; there was a hesitating appeal in his face, as in that of a hurt child. Suddenly Rebecca raised both her arms and put them around his neck; he leaned his cheek down against her soft hair. "Poor William," she whispered, as if he had been her child instead of her lover.

A girl in the merry party speeding along at the foot of the hill glanced around just then; she turned again, blushing hotly, and touched a girl near her, who also glanced around. Then their two blushing faces confronted each other with significant half-shamed smiles of innocent young girlhood.

They locked arms, and whispered as they went on. "Did you see?"

"Yes." "His head?" "Yes." "Her arms?" "Yes." Neither had ever had a lover.

But the two lovers at the top of the hill paid no heed. The party were all out of sight when they went slowly down in the gathering twilight. William left Rebecca when they came opposite her house.

Chapter VIII

When Rebecca entered the house, her mother was standing over the stove, making milk-toast for supper. The boiling milk steamed up fiercely in her face. "What makes you so long behind the others?" she demanded, without turning, stirring the milk as she spoke.

"I guess I ain't much, am I?" Rebecca said, evasively. She tried to make her voice sound as it usually did, but she could not. It broke and took on faltering cadences, as if she were intoxicated with some subtle wine of the spirit.

Her mother looked around at her. Rebecca's face was full of a strange radiance which she could not subdue before her mother's hard, inquiring gaze. Her cheeks burned with splendid color, her lips trembled into smiles in spite of herself, her eyes were like dark fires, shifting before her mother's, but not paling.

"Ephraim see 'em all go by half an hour ago," said her mother.

Rebecca made no reply.

"If," said her mother, "you stayed behind to see William Berry, I can tell you one thing, once for all: you needn't do it again."

"I had to see him about something," Rebecca faltered.

"Well, you needn't see him again about anything. You might jest as well understand it first as last: if you've got any idea of havin'

William Berry, you've got to give it up."

"Mother, I'd like to know what you mean!" Rebecca cried out, blushing.

"Look 'round here at me!" her mother ordered, suddenly.

"Don't, mother."

"Look at me!"

Rebecca lifted her face perforce, and her mother eyed her pitilessly.

"You ain't been tellin' of him you'd have him, now?" said she. "Why don't you speak?"

"Not--just."

"Then you needn't."

"Mother!"

"You needn't talk. You can jest make up your mind to it. You ain't goin' to marry William Berry. Your brother has had enough to do with that family."

"Mother, you won't stop my marrying William because Barney won't marry his cousin Charlotte? There ain't any sense in that."

"I've got my reasons, an' that's enough for you," said Deborah. "You ain't goin' to marry William Berry."

"I am, if you haven't got any better reason than that. I won't stand it, mother; it ain't right!" Rebecca cried out.

"Then," said Deborah, and as she spoke she began spooning out the toast gravy into a bowl with a curious stiff turn of her wrist and a superfluous vigor of muscle, as if it were molten lead instead of milk; and, indeed, she might, from the look in her face, have been one of her female ancestors in the times of the French and Indian wars, casting bullets with the yells of savages in her ears--"then,"

said she, "I sha'n't have any child but Ephraim left, that's all!"

"Mother, don't!" gasped Rebecca.

"There's another thing: if you marry William Berry against your parents' wishes, you know what you have to expect. You remember your aunt Rebecca."

Rebecca twisted her whole body about with the despairing motion with which she would have wrung her hands, flung open the door, and ran out of the room.

Deborah went on spooning up the toast. Ephraim had come in just as she spoke last to Rebecca, and he stood staring, grinning with gaping mouth.