caused by the Mill. Is there anything that I can do, child?"

"There is nothing that any one can do, I fear," she returned, with a
little gesture of hopelessness. Then, avoiding the grave, kindly eyes
of the old basket maker, she forced herself to say, in a tone that was
little more than a whisper, "I sometimes think--at tines I am almost
compelled to believe that there _is_ something more--something that
we--that no one knows about." With sudden desperate earnestness she
went on with nervous haste as if she feared her momentary courage would
fail. "I can't explain--but it is as if he were hiding something and
dreaded every moment that it would be discovered. He is so--so afraid.
Can it be possible that there is something that we do not know--some
hidden thing?" And then, before the Interpreter could speak, she
exclaimed, with a forced laugh of embarrassment, "How silly of me to
talk like this--you will think that I am going insane."


When he was alone, the Interpreter turned again to his basket making.
"Yes, Billy," he said aloud as his deaf and dumb companion appeared in
the doorway a few minutes later, "yes, Billy, she will find her jewel
of happiness. But it will not be easy, Billy--it will not be easy."

To which, of course, Billy made no reply. And that--the Interpreter
always maintained--was one of the traits that made his companion such a
delightful conversationalist. He invariably found your pet arguments
and theories unanswerable, and accepted your every assertion without
question.


Helen Ward could not feel that her father's condition--much as it