Andrew caught up little Ellen, who was beginning to look scared, wrapped the first thing he could seize around her, and fairly fled across the yard to his mother's. Then he sat down and wept like a boy, and his pride left him at last. "Oh, mother," he sobbed, "if it were not for the child, I would go away, for my home is a hell!" Mrs. Zelotes stood clasping little Ellen, who clung to her, trembling. "Well, come over here with me," she said, "you and Ellen." "Live here in the next house!" said Andrew. "Do you suppose Fanny would have the child living under her very eyes in the next house? No, there is no way out of the misery--no way; but if it was not for the child, I would go!" Andrew burst out in such wild sobs that his mother released Ellen and ran to him; and the child, trembling and crying with a curious softness, as of fear at being heard, ran out of the house and back to her home. "Oh, mother," she cried, breaking in upon the dialogue of anger which was still going on there with her little tremulous flute--"oh, mother, father is crying!" "I don't care," answered her mother, fiercely, her temper causing her to lose sight of the child's agitation. "I don't care. If it wasn't for you, I would leave him. I wouldn't live as I am doing. I would leave everybody. I am tired of this awful life. Oh, if it wasn't for you, Ellen, I would leave everybody and start fresh!" "You can leave _me_ whenever you want to," said Eva, her handsome face burning red with wrath, and she went out of the room, which was suffocating with the fumes of the burning wool, tossing her black head, all banged and coiled in the latest fashion. Of late years Fanny had sunk her personal vanity further and further in that for her child. She brushed her own hair back hard from her temples, and candidly revealed all her unyouthful lines, and dwelt fondly upon the arrangement of little Ellen's locks, which were of a fine, pale yellow, as clear as the color of amber. She never recut her skirts or her sleeves, but she studied anxiously all the slightest changes in children's fashions. After her sister had left the room with a loud bang of the door, she sat for a moment gazing straight ahead, her face working, then she burst into such a passion of hysterical wailing as the child had never heard. Ellen, watching her mother with eyes so frightened and full of horror that there was no room for childish love and pity in them, grew very pale. She had left the door by which she had entered open; she gazed one moment at her mother, then she turned and slipped out of the room, and, opening the outer door softly, though her mother would not have heard nor noticed, went out of the house. Then she ran as fast as she could down the frozen road, a little, dark figure, passing as rapidly as the shadow of a cloud between the earth and the full moon. Chapter II