“They say he’s going to marry the girl you call Kate--the big one with the black eyes.” The story was out. Jessica sat still under the revelation for a moment, and held up a restraining hand when her father offered to speak further. Then she rose and walked to and fro across the little room, in front of the stove where Ben sat, her hands hanging at her side and her brows bent with thought. At last she stopped before him and said: “Tell me all over again about the stopping of the works--all you know about it.” Ben Lawton complied, and re-stated, with as much detail as he could command, the facts already exposed. The girl listened carefully, but with growing disappointment. Somehow the notion had arisen in her mind that there would be something important in this story--something which it would be of use to understand. But her brain could make nothing significant out of this commonplace narrative of a lockout and a threatened dispute about wages. Gradually, as she thought, two things rose as certainties upon the surface of her reflections. “That scoundrel is to blame for both things. He advised her to avoid me, and he advised her to do this other mischief.” “I thought you’d like to know,” Ben put in, deferentially. He felt a very humble individual indeed when his eldest daughter paced up and down and spoke in that tone. “Yes, I’m glad I know,” she said, swiftly. She eyed her father in an abstracted way for an instant, and then added, as if thinking aloud: “Well, then, my fine gentleman, you--simply--shall--_not_--marry Miss Minster!” Ben moved uneasily in his seat, as if this warning had been personally addressed to him. “It _would_ be pretty rough, for a fact, wouldn’t it?” he said. “Well, it won’t _be_ at all!” she made emphatic answer. “I don’t know as you can do much to pervent it, Jess,” he ventured to say. “Can’t I? _Cant_ I!” she exclaimed, with grim earnestness. “Wait and see.” Ben had waited all his life, and he proceeded now to take her at her word, sitting very still, and fixing a ruminative gaze on the side of the little stove. “All right,” he said, wrapped in silence and the placidity of contented suspense. But Jessica was now all eagerness and energy. She opened the store door, and called out to Lucinda with business-like decision of tone: “Come in now, and hurry dinner up as fast as you can. I want to catch the 1.20 train for Tecumseh.” The other two made no comment on this hasty resolve, but during the brief and not over-inviting meal which followed, watched their kinswoman with side-glances of uneasy surprise. The girl herself hastened through her dinner without a word of conversation, and then disappeared within the little chamber where she and Lucinda slept together. It was only when she came out again, with her hat and cloak on and a little travelling-bag in her hand, that she felt impelled to throw some light on her intention. She took from her purse a bank-note and gave it to her sister.