"Julia," he said appealingly, "ye see how I be hunted an' harried, an' nobody keers fur me. Jes' let the folks shudder an' quake fur a while longer 'thout knowin' what's kem o' me. Don't tell nobody ez ye hev seen me hyar." She was gazing out at the steely lines of the rain curtain, so dense as to be like a veritable fabric, as it swayed in the wind at the rugged mouth of the mine, and its foaming white fringes that seemed to trail upon the brown water where the continuous downfall splashed into its currents. The peculiarly clear, colorless light of a gray day, which, in its adequacy for all the purposes of mere vision, would seem to point the munificence and splendid lavishness of the sun's bestowals in the interests of beauty and growths and the gladdening of the heart of man, was upon her face, which responded with a sort of subdued glister like marble. Her eyes and the shadowy long black lashes were meditatively downcast. She was evidently reviewing the course of action which she had just sketched for him, for Adelicia, for Cap'n Lucy. He did not hold her undivided attention, and he realized that it was only a mechanical assent as she nodded, her face still reflective, absorbed. "Not even Cap'n Lucy," he urged eagerly. "Not Jasper Lar'bee"--He paused suddenly. The word seemed to arrest, to enchain, her elusive attention. The delicate roseate tints of her fair complexion deepened from throat to brow; her cheek was vividly red. She was remembering the Larrabee threshold, the greeting she had encountered there, the grotesque indignity of Henrietta Timson's affronts. But hers was a reticent habit, and she had a reserved nature. She only said, conclusively, slowly, "Ye may be sure I won't tell Jasper Lar'bee." Somehow Espey felt a sense of loss; and he had so little to lose, poor fellow, that albeit her affection was unsought, uncared for, unsuspected till a moment ago, the doubt of it afflicted him as if his heart were cruelly rifled. That flush at Larrabee's name! To him it was conclusive. He had no other indication by which to judge. He had mistaken her sympathy, her idle talk; she was wont to talk so seldom that it was not surprising that he hardly knew how to take her words; he knew so little of her and her mental processes. She cared for Larrabee, not for him. Nobody cared for him. And Adelicia was hoping for the best. "This be a mighty pore shelter an' home an' hope," he said, grimly looking about him. "I hed prayed I mought crope inter a hole ter hide or die, like a hunted fox or bar or painter be 'lowed ter do sometimes. That didn't 'pear ter me much fur a man ter ax of the Lord."