"Jerry, dear, I've never told you much about myself because I could not do that without telling you of your own father. I was a very lonely little girl; I had no brothers or sisters--no near relatives. My mother died when I was eight years old, and a housekeeper--good soul--brought me up. My father was a professor of chemistry in Harvard, as you know, and he was a queer man and his friends were peculiar, too--not the sort that was much company for a young girl. But I was very fond of my father and I was very content with my simple life until I met Craig Winton. He was so different from anyone else who had ever crossed our threshold that I fell in love with him at once. My father died suddenly and Craig Winton asked me to marry him. It was the maddest folly--he had nothing except his inventive genius and he should never have tied himself to domestic responsibilities; they were always--such as they were--like a dreadful yoke to his spirit. But we were happy, oh, we were _happy_ in a wonderful, unreal way. Sometimes we didn't have enough to eat, but he always had so much faith in what he was going to do that _that_ somehow, kept us going. But when his faith began to die--it was dreadful. It was as though some hidden poison was killing him, right before my eyes." "What made his faith die?" asked Jerry, curiously. "Because he grew to distrust his fellowmen. That second visit to Peter Westley----" Mrs. Travis spoke quickly to hide her bitterness. "He was so sure that what he had made was good--an inventor has always, my dear, an irrational love for the thing he has created--and to have it _spurned_! He was supersensitive, super--everything. Then my own health went to pieces. I suppose I simply was not getting enough to eat to give me the strength to meet the mental strain under which I had to live--and you were coming. From his last visit to Peter Westley he returned with a little money, but he was as a crushed, broken man--his bitterness had unbalanced his mind. He said that it was for my health that he came away with me, but I knew that it was to get away from the world that he hated--and to hide his failure! Your Little-Dad took us in. He knew at once that your father was a very sick man and he brought him to his cabin here on Kettle. But even here your father suffered, and after you were born he feared for you. He was obsessed with the thought that _you_ had all life to face----" "How dreadfully sorry you must have felt for him," whispered Jerry, shyly, trying to make it all seem true.