"Ther' 's none like yoh,--none."
"Father, look here."
She put her misshapen head and scarred face down on his hand,
where he could see them. If it had ever hurt her to be as she
was, if she had ever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved
women, she was glad now, and thankful, for every fault and
deformity that brought her nearer to him, and made her dearer.
"They're kind, but ther' 's not many loves me with true love,
like yoh. Stay, father! Bear it out, whatever it be. Th' good
time 'll come, father."
He kissed her, saying nothing, and went with her down the street.
When he left her, she waited, and, creeping back, hid near the
mill. God knows what vague dread was in her brain; but she came
back to watch and help.
Old Yare wandered through the great loom rooms of the mill with
but one fact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception,--that
above him the man lay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than
death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his
stoker's torch in hand, going over the years gone and the years
to come, with the dead hatred through all of the pitiless man
above him,--with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanter thought of
things that had been warm and cheerful in his life,--of the
corn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in "th'
Alabam',"--of the scow his young master gave him once, the first
thing he really owned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of
Lois when she was born. Most of all remembering the good times
in his life, he went back to Lois.
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