He let his hand wander gently over her crown of hair, as he said, “Yes—yes, daughter; I know how you feel. I used to have just such thoughts, and ma—your ma—used to make me feel as though I could see right up into God’s heart, and I knew—I _knew_—that I could live well enough to reach Him, sometime, I should if ma hadn’t have died; but now—I just have to make the best of it,” he finished despondently. “But pa, hadn’t you ought to try now—for ma’s sake?” “How can I? I never have time even to think. No, no, daughter, I must just make the best of it,” he reiterated wearily. She had no words of comfort that had not in them a sound of mockery, so she said nothing beyond thanking him for his consent, and as she kissed him lovingly, she patted his withered cheek with her toil-roughened palms: “Poor pa! Poor pa! I love you dearly,” she said. A tear stole down his furrowed face and wet her hands; he tremblingly murmured, “God bless my daughter!” The next morning Mrs. Armitage screamed in vain to Thella: “Drat her, I’ll take a strap to her, if she’s bigger’n the side of a house.” When at last she threw open the door of the poor, bare little chamber, she found it empty. For once words failed her—she sat down on the stairs gasping. Pa wisely kept out of her way. She missed her servant, but poor pa went about more silent than ever; it seemed that in one short month he grew visibly gray and bent; he worked on hopelessly through heat and cold. The only smile that ever crossed his face was when he received a thick letter from the village postmaster; he would hide it away in his inside pocket with trembling hands for fear Mandy would see it; a little spot of color coming into his thin old cheeks at the thought; at nightfall he would wander down the lane where he used to walk with Thella, and just to make believe that she would come to meet him, he would crook his little finger and whistle shrilly. Oh, the comfort those letters were to him; after reading them over and over again, he would hide them away in a hollow log. Thella always wrote to him that she was well and happy; she told him nothing of the hard labor and bitter disappointments she met; her situation had been assured to her before she left home, but there were many things that were hard to bear; not the least of which was a terrible homesickness. Then, too, when she came to go to school, she found that others of the same age were far in advance of her in their studies, and consequently looked down upon her. Patient effort at last brought success; by this time her homesick feeling had worn away; she still longed to see her father, but had ever the hope before her of a home in which “pa” should have the warmest corner in winter and the brightest window when he wished it. Later on she wrote that she was teaching; pa whispered it softly to himself: “My Thella is a schoolmam!” Such innocent pride as pa took in the fact. After four years she wrote to him that she was married.