In half an hour he quitted work, and went up to his house with his hoe over his shoulder like a bayonet. The house was just as the workmen had left it on the night before his quarrel with Cephas Barnard. He had himself fitted some glass into the windows of the kitchen and bedroom, and boarded up the others--that was all. He had purchased a few simple bits of furniture, and set up his miserable bachelor house-keeping. Barney was no cook, and he could purchase no cooked food in Pembroke. He had subsisted mostly upon milk and eggs and a poor and lumpy quality of corn-meal mush, which he had made shift to stir up after many futile efforts. The first thing which he saw on entering the room to-night was a generous square of light Indian cake on the table. It was not in a plate, the edges were bent and crumbling, and the whole square looked somewhat flattened. Barney knew at once that his father had saved it from his own supper, had slipped it slyly into his pocket, and stolen across the field with it. His mother had not given him a mouthful since she had forbidden him to come home to dinner, and his sister had not dared. Barney sat down and ate the Indian cake, a solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like phantoms. A woman came running noiselessly into the yard, and pressed against the door panting, and knocked. Barney saw the swirl of light skirts around the corner; then the knock came. [Illustration: "Barney sat staring at vacancy"] He got up, trembling, and opened the door, and stood there looking at the woman, who held her hooded head down. "It's me, Barney," said Charlotte's voice. "Come in," said Barney, and he moved aside. But Charlotte stood still. "I can say what I want to here," she whispered, panting. "Barney." "Well, what is it, Charlotte?" "Barney." Barney waited. "I've come over here to-night, Barney, to see you," said Charlotte, with solemn pauses between her words. "I don't know as I ought to; I don't know but I ought to have more pride. I thought at first I never--could--but afterwards I thought it was my duty. Barney, are you going to let--anything like this--come between us--forever?" "There's no use talking, Charlotte." Charlotte's hooded figure stood before him stiff and straight. There was resolution in her carriage, and her pleading tone was grave and solemn. "Barney," she said again; and Barney waited, his pale face standing aloof in the dark. "Barney, do you think it is right to let anything like this come between you and me, when we were almost husband and wife?"