"While father was flat on his back, folks were talking about him. We had to raise money on the boats to pay for our food and father's medicine. If we don't have a good season this summer we will be unable to pay off the chattel mortgage next winter, and will lose the boats. I tell you, Miss Wyn, it is _hard_." "You poor, dear girl!" exclaimed Wyn. "I should think it _was_ hard. And that mean man accuses your father----" "Well, you see, there was father's past record against him. The story of his trouble here in Denton followed him into the woods, of course. If anybody gets mad at us up at the Forge, they throw the whole thing up to us. I--I _hate_ it there," sobbed the boatkeeper's daughter. "And yet, it is harder on poor father. He is straight, but everything has been against him. I saw he felt dreadfully these past few days because I need some decent clothes. And there is no money to buy any. "So I thought I would come to town and see some old friends of mother's who used to come and see us years ago. Yes, there were a few people who stuck to mother, even if they did not quite approve of poor father. But, when I paddled 'way down here----" "Not in a canoe?" cried Wyn. "Yes, I came down very easily yesterday evening and stopped at a boatman's house on the edge of town. I shall go back again to-day. The Wintinooski isn't kicking up much of a rumpus just now. The spring floods are about all over." "But you must be a splendid hand with a paddle," said Wyn. "It's a long way to the lake." "Oh! I don't mind it," said Polly. "Or, I _wouldn't_ mind it if it had done me the least good to come down here," and she sighed. "You are disappointed?" queried Wyn. "Dreadfully! I did not find mother's old friends. I had not heard from them for two or three years, and found that they were away--nobody knows where. I did not know but I might get work here in town for a few weeks, and live with these old friends, and so earn some money. I am so shabby! And father isn't fit to be seen. "And then--then there was a man in town who used to befriend mother. I know when I was quite a little girl, the year after we had gone to the woods to live, father was ill for a long time and mother had to have things. She went to this storekeeper in Denton and he let her have things on account and we paid him afterward. Oh, we paid him--every cent!" declared Polly, again wiping her eyes. "And I hoped he would--for mother's sake--help us again. I went to him. I--I reminded him of how father once worked for him, and that he knew mother. But he was angry about something--he would not listen--he would neither give me work nor let me have goods charged. I--I--well, it just broke me down, Wyn Mallory, and I came here to cry it out." "It's a shame!" exclaimed Wyn. "I am just as sorry for you as I can be. And I believe that your father is perfectly honest and that he never in his life intended to defraud anybody."