And he had already become accustomed to say the name twice, for on hearing it the first time, people either did not understand him or would not believe him. Stephen Fausch did not treat the boy a hair's breadth differently from what he would have done had there been no spot upon him. Since the child had outgrown the exclusive care of Katharine, and could stand and walk and feed himself, he still slept in the maid's room upstairs, but he shared the living room with his father and ate with him at the table. Stephen did not concern himself much about the child, but he was not unkind to him; for the first while, it seemed as if he purposely looked over the top of the little fellow's head. But in the last year there had come a change, as the little boy's speech and ideas began to grow clearer and cleverer, and now and then, as is the case with all children, some speech of his would delight the listener with its precocity or drollery. The smith led too lonely a life not to welcome the little change that the boy brought him, although he did not admit this, either to himself or to others. He called him oftener to the workshop, tossed him a light hammer to play with, or told him to notice how he himself shaped a horseshoe, how he bent a glowing bar, or other such matters. When the two were alone, there was a droll sort of companionship between them, and they would talk together while the smith was working. The two voices resounded between the cling-clang of the hammers, Fausch's dull or loud, then the child's voice clear and high, like the sound of the hammer when it rebounded from the very outer tip of the anvil. The figures of the man and the boy made a striking contrast. When he was near the boy, Fausch looked still heavier, stouter and darker than usual. The light of the forge fire shone on his brown face and showed the charcoal streaks on it and the dust in his thick, tangled, black beard. The sparks flew from his heavy blows, but they flew in short spurts, as straight as an arrow to the ground. They fell before the little boy's feet in their coarse shoes, or even on his shoes, and if one glowed for some time on the rough floor, the child would look at it and laugh with delight if it was slow in dying out. But the boy was as fair as the man was dark. He stood there looking as if he had just come out of a bandbox, for Katharine still took the same care of him that she had formerly taken of the little count. He did, indeed, wear coarse gray stockings, and his jacket and trousers were made out of Fausch's cast off Sunday clothes. The stuff was rough and homely, but the coarse shirt that showed at the neck and wrists was of a glistening white, that looked so strangely clean in the dirty blacksmith shop, that its color seemed, as it were, to stab through the darkness. But that was not the only bright spot about the child. His hands were small and slender and really quite delicate, and they had a clever way of touching any dirty object with