should soon go in there by themselves. They usually did of a Sunday
night, but sometimes Cephas forbade his daughter to light the fire
and prohibited any solitary communion between the lovers.

"If Barnabas Thayer can't set here with the rest of us, he can go
home," he proclaimed at times, and he had done so to-night. Charlotte
had acquiesced forlornly; there was nothing else for her to do. Early
in her childhood she had learned along with her primer her father's
character, and the obligations it imposed upon her.

"You must be a good girl, and mind; it's your father's way," her
mother used to tell her. Mrs. Barnard herself had spelt out her
husband like a hard and seemingly cruel text in the Bible. She
marvelled at its darkness in her light, but she believed in it
reverently, and even pugnaciously.

The large, loosely built woman, with her heavy, sliding step, waxed
fairly decisive, and her soft, meek-lidded eyes gleamed hard and
prominent when her elder sister, Hannah, dared inveigh against
Cephas.

"I tell you it is his way," said Sarah Barnard. And she said it as if
"his way" was the way of the King.

"His way!" Hannah would sniff back. "His way! Keepin' you all on rye
meal one spell, an' not lettin' you eat a mite of Injun, an' then
keepin' you on Injun without a mite of rye! Makin' you eat nothin'
but greens an' garden stuff, an' jest turnin' you out to graze an'
chew your cuds like horned animals one spell, an' then makin' you
live on meat! Lettin' you go abroad when he takes a notion, an' then