submitted to all his restrictions and severities, stonily watching her
girlhood go, through a fading, lining and hardening of her prettiness.
Then all at once, with no word of pleading or warning, she had done the
monstrous thing. He awoke one day to know that his beloved child had
gone away to marry the handsome, swaggering, fiddle-playing
good-for-nothing who had that winter given singing lessons in the
village.

Only once after that had he looked upon her face--the face of a withered
sprite, subdued by time. The hurt of that look was still fresh in him,
making his mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to the two
little boys asleep in the west bedroom. Had the seed of revolt been in
her, from his own revolt against his father? Would it presently bear some
ugly fruit in her sons?

From a drawer in the table he took a little sheaf of folded sheets, and
read again the last letter that had come from her; read it not without
grim mutterings and oblique little jerks of the narrow old head, yet with
quick tender glows melting the sternness.

"You must not think I have ever regretted my choice, though every day of
my life I have sorrowed at your decision not to see me so long as I stayed
by my husband. How many times I have prayed God to remind you that I took
him for better or worse, till death should us part."

This made him mutter.

"Clayton has never in his life failed of kindness and gentleness to
me"--so ran the letter--"and he has always provided for us as well as a
man of his _uncommon talents_ could."