"I played with a nice boy over to Boynton's," mused the child.

"That was Ivory, their only child. He is a good little fellow,
but his mother and father will spoil him with their crazy ways."

"I hope nothing will happen to him, for I love him," said the
child gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first
ever I saw, and the littlest!"

"Don't talk about loving him," chided the woman. "If your father
should hear you, he'd send you to bed without your porridge."

"Father couldn't hear me, for I never speak when he's at home,"
said grave little Waitstill. "And I'm used to going to bed
without my porridge."



II

THE SISTERS

THE river was still running under the bridge, but the current of
time had swept Jacob Cochrane out of sight, though not out of
mind, for he had left here and there a disciple to preach his
strange and uncertain doctrine. Waitstill, the child who never
spoke in her father's presence, was a young woman now, the
mistress of the house; the stepmother was dead, and the baby a
girl of seventeen.