dropped upon her; and, as the tidal swell of the river broke at her feet
without her seeing how it gathered, so, her thoughts startled her by
rushing out of an unseen void and striking at her heart.

Of her father's being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure.
And yet, repeat the word inwardly as often as she would, the attempt to
reason out and prove that she was sure, always came after it and failed.
Riderhood had done the deed, and entrapped her father. Riderhood had
not done the deed, but had resolved in his malice to turn against her
father, the appearances that were ready to his hand to distort. Equally
and swiftly upon either putting of the case, followed the frightful
possibility that her father, being innocent, yet might come to be
believed guilty. She had heard of people suffering Death for bloodshed
of which they were afterwards proved pure, and those ill-fated persons
were not, first, in that dangerous wrong in which her father stood. Then
at the best, the beginning of his being set apart, whispered against,
and avoided, was a certain fact. It dated from that very night. And as
the great black river with its dreary shores was soon lost to her view
in the gloom, so, she stood on the river's brink unable to see into the
vast blank misery of a life suspected, and fallen away from by good and
bad, but knowing that it lay there dim before her, stretching away to
the great ocean, Death.

One thing only, was clear to the girl's mind. Accustomed from her very
babyhood promptly to do the thing that could be done--whether to keep
out weather, to ward off cold, to postpone hunger, or what not--she
started out of her meditation, and ran home.

The room was quiet, and the lamp burnt on the table. In the bunk in the
corner, her brother lay asleep. She bent over him softly, kissed him,