“You knew what to do about _me_, David.” She gave her stab, and then she pitied him, not for the pain she was willing he should feel from it, but for the pain he was feeling before. “I know it isn't like that. I'm sorry for you both. You haven't come to the end of your troubles.” “I can't understand the girl,” he said desolately. “Up to a year ago she was like she had always been, as biddable as a child, and meek and yielding every way. All at once she's got stiff-necked and wilful.” “She couldn't tell you why, herself, David. We are all that way--good little girls--and then all of a sudden wilful women. I don't know what changes us. It's harder on us than it is on you. It came on me like a thief in the night and stole away my sense. It gave Joseph Dylks his chance over me; if it had been sooner or later I should have known he was a power of darkness as far as I could see him. But my eyes were holden by my self-conceit, and I thought he was an angel of light.” “He's got past being an angel now,” Gillespie said, forcing himself to the real matter of his errand, far from the question of his daughter's estrangement from her old self. “Did Joey tell you about--last night?” Nancy did not quit the psychological question at once. “Up to that time we think our fathers and brothers are something above the human; then we think they're not even up to the common run of men. We think other men are different because we don't know them. Yes,” she returned to his question with a sigh, “Joey told me something about it--enough about it. I suppose it isn't right to let him be a spy on his father; but I have to. If I didn't he might want to go, from the talk of those fools, and get to believin' with them. He said there was boys and girls kneelin' with the rest--little children, almost, and shoutin' and prayin' to Joseph. Did you see 'em?” “Yes; it was dreadful, Nancy. But it was worse to see the women, the grown-up girls, and the mothers of the children. It looked like they had been drinking. It fairly turned me sick. And my own daughter groveling on her knees with the worst! If I didn't know Dylks for the thing he is, without an idea beyond victuals and clothes, I might ha' thought he had thrown a spell on 'em, just for deviltry. But they done it all themselves; he just gave them the _chance_ to play the fool.” Nancy resumed from her own more immediate interest, “Well, I let Joey go; and I don't know whether it helps or hurts to have him come home feelin' about him, and all the goings on, just like I would myself. He always says he's glad I wasn't there, and he pities the poor fool women more than he despises his father. Or I ortn't to say despise; Joey don't despise anybody; he's all good, through and through; I don't know where he gets it. He's like Laban, and yet he ain't any kin to Laban.” “It must be hard on you, Nancy. I don't know how you can bear up the way you do. It is like a living streak of fire in me.”