Then she put him away from her softly, and went about setting bread to rise. But he followed beseechingly at her heels, with a little parcel which he had been hiding in a corner of the dresser. "I bought these for you, with some of my trap money, for a little present," the boy whispered, piteously; and Madelon smiled at him and took the parcel and opened it, and found therein a pair of fine red-satin shoes. Then he brightened at the delight which she showed, and went up-stairs to bed, feeling that after all it would be no such hard task for his sister to marry Lot Gordon, and cover her fault of mad temper and her disgrace. "He likes her so much he will treat her kindly, and she will have a fine house, and plenty of silk gowns, and feathers in her bonnets," reflected Richard, comfortably, with no more consciousness of his sister's outlook upon life than if his eyes were turned towards a scene in another world. Still he loved his sister with all his heart, although he never in his life had seen anything just as she saw it. He did not dream that Madelon's calm broke before his red-satin shoes, and that she was sitting alone before the kitchen fire with them in her lap, weeping bitterly. She was made of stern stuff to endure the worst of things; but, after all, the pitiful little accessories of grief and death are harder to bear without weakening, because all one's powers of defence are not enlisted against them. They are sometimes the scouts that kill. Poor Madelon looked at her brother's wedding-gift, the little red-satin shoes, in which she could never walk or dance with a merry heart, and her courage almost failed her. But it was only for a little while. She rose up and finished setting the bread to rise, and then she went to her chamber and packed away the shoes with the other things in the cedar chest. Through the days that came now Madelon toiled as she had never toiled before, although she had always been an industrious girl. She had her own linen-chest, which she would take with her when she married, and now she bestirred herself to replenish the stores of the house she would leave, for the comfort of her father and brothers. Long before dawn the gentle hum of her spinning-wheel began, although the days were lengthening, and many a time she sat plying it on her solitary hearth until after midnight. She spent days at the great loom in the north chamber, marching back and forth before it, a straight, resolute figure of industry filling human needs, although with sweat of the brow and heart's blood. No happier was she for her hard toil, but it kept at least the spirit of fierce endurance alive within her, for no one succumbs entirely to misery with unfolded hands. Then, too, she was upheld somewhat by her pride in right-doing and providing for the interests of her family. Enough of the New England conscience she had to give her a certain comfort in holding herself to duty, like a knife to a grindstone.