"Sing!" echoed Katy. "I, sing? I can only caw like a crow." "You had such plans," said Uncle Edwin. "You were going to be so educated. You were going to bring home your sheaves!" "I have more sense now," explained Katy. She looked at them brightly. Her eyes measured their broad shoulders--how she longed to lay her heavy burden upon them! She no longer belonged to her kin, she was an alien; she had allied herself with Koehlers, with William Koehler who was a thief, with Alvin Koehler who scorned her. She would sooner die than tell what she had done. The Gaumers were not niggardly, but they knew the value of money. Even Katy had learned that it took thirty-three and one third weeks to earn fifty dollars! "You must let me be!" she burst out wildly. "I am not a child. I have no father and mother and my dear grandfather and grandmother are dead. You must let me be! You are persecuting me!" In an instant the stairway door closed in the faces of her astonished elders. Uncle Edwin got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. "Millerstown will think we are ugly to her," he said. "I do not care what Millerstown thinks," declared the squire as he rose to go. "It is what _I_ think. In the name of sense what has come over the girl?" In her room Katy threw herself once more upon that oft-used refuge, her bed. "If I could forget him," she moaned. "If I only could forget him. It is not right to think of him. I cannot be learned, but I can be good. It is wrong to think all the time of him." She remembered various women in the village who loved inconstant, unfaithful men. "I am a Mary Wolle! I am Sally Hersh! I am a shame to myself!" Three times before September the squire reasoned with her. Even the doctor ventured to remonstrate. "No Gaumer has ever done such a thing before, Katy." "Well, you," said Katy with spirit, "are not a Gaumer, so you do not need to care." At her Bevy stormed. "You surely have one rafter too few or too many, Katy. There is something wrong with your little house! _Are_ you crazy, Katy?" "Yes," answered Katy, thus nearly paralyzing Bevy Schnepp. "I am." In September Katy took up her abode at the Hartmans'. Millerstown saw her go with wonder. She carried a little satchel and walked with her chin in the air. Millerstown gazed out doors and windows to see whether the thing it had heard could be true. "Ach, Katy!" protested Sarah Ann, "are you not going to be high gelernt?" Sarah Ann suspected some difficulty at home; her sympathetic soul was distressed for Katy. "You can come any time and live with me." "Won't you ever go to your uncle any more?" asked Susannah Kuhns, her frank inquiry voicing the curiosity of Millerstown. Katy turned and faced them. "Why, certainly I will. I will go there every day."