sisters."

"Are they married?"

"They are dead," he said, slowly. "They and my mother were burnt to
death."

She exclaimed. Her brown eyes turned upon him--all sudden horror and
compassion.

"It was a farmhouse where we were living--and it took fire. Mother and
sisters had no time to escape. It was early morning. I was a boy of
eighteen, and was out on the farm doing my chores. When I saw smoke and
came back, the house was a burning mass, and--it was all over."

"Where was your father?"

"My father is dead."

"But he was there--at the time of the fire?"

"Yes. He was there."

He had suddenly ceased to be communicative, and she instinctively asked
no more questions, except as to the cause of the conflagration.

"Probably an explosion of coal-oil. It was sometimes used to light the
fire with in the morning."

"How very, very terrible!" she said gently, after a moment, as though