will let me make up in some way. Mother will not need me all the time, and
I know thy mother hires women to spin."

"She'll let you do all you like if it will make you any happier. But you
don't know how much money is coming to you. Come, let us look over the
figures."

He lowered the lid of the black mahogany secretary, placed a chair for
Dorothy and opened a great ledger before her, bending down, with one hand
on the back of the chair, the other turning the leaves of the ledger.
Considering the index and the position of the letter B in the alphabet, he
was a long time finding his place. Dorothy looked out of the window over
the tops of the yellowing woods to the gray and turbid river below. Where
the hemlocks darkened the channel of the glen she heard the angry floods
rushing down. The formless rain mists hung low and hid the opposite shore.

"See!" said Evesham, his finger wandering rather vaguely down the page.
"Your father went away on the 3d of May. The first month's rent came due on
the 3d of June. That was the day I opened the gate and let the water down
on you, Dorothy. I'm responsible for everything, you see,--even for the old
ewe that was drowned."

His words came in a dream as he bent over her, resting his unsteady hand
heavily on the ledger.

Dorothy laid her cheek on the date that she could not see and burst into
tears.

"Don't,--please don't!" he said, straightening himself and locking his
hands behind him. "I am human, Dorothy."