high-bred; she had learned conservatism in her cradle. Her life
in the West had not yet quickened her pulse. So she put aside
whatever social mystery or wrong faced her in this girl, just as
you or I would have done. She had her own pain to bear. Was she
her brother's keeper? It was true, there was wrong; this woman's
soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her
birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help?
She was free,-- and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for
all the soul's diseases, and----

Well, Lois was quiet now,--ready to be drawn into a dissertation
on Barney's vices and virtues, or her room, where "th' air was so
strong, 'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh,-- best
in THIS town," she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or
on the river-bank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or
barn-yards of the farms. The fences were well built, she
noticed,--the barns wide and snug-looking: for this county in
Indiana is settled by New England people, as a general thing, or
Pennsylvanians. They both leave their mark on barns or fields, I
can tell you! The two women were talking all the way. In all
his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this silent girl words
as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about paltry,
common things,--partly, as I said, from a hope to forget herself,
and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world which
opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbid
shadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures
were intensely real, like those of her class. If there were
latent powers in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary