And yet, as her father drove her in the old shambling buggy across the hill road to the town, there stood out in her mind one other picture which lingered there all day and for many days. She could not forget it nor cast it from her, and in spite of all her sorrow it uplifted her as she had been uplifted at times before when, reading the country newspaper, there had blossomed among its dry pages the perfume of a stray poem, whose incense entered into her soul of souls. It was a young man in his shirt sleeves, his face flushed with work, his throat bare, plowing on the slope of the hillside for the fall sowing of wheat. What a splendid picture he was, silhouetted in the rising sun against the pink and purple background of sunbeams! It was Clay Westmore, and he waved his hand in his slow, calm forceful way as he saw her go by. It was a little thing, but it comforted her. She remembered it long. The mill had been running several hours when Kingsley looked up, and saw standing before him at his office window a girl of such stately beauty that he stood looking sillily at her, and wondering. He did not remember very clearly afterwards anything except this first impression; that her hair was plaited in two rich coils upon her head, and that never before had he seen so much beauty in a gingham dress. He remembered, too, that her eyes, which held him spellbound, wore more an expression of despair and even desperation than of youthful hope. He could not understand why they looked that way, forerunners as they were of such a face and hair. And so he stood, sillily smiling, until Richard Travis arose from his desk and came forward to meet her. She nodded at him and tried to smile, but Kingsley noticed that it died away into drawn, hard lines around her pretty mouth. "It is Miss Conway," he said to Kingsley, taking her hand familiarly and holding it until she withdrew it with a conscious touch of embarrassment. "She is one of my neighbors, and, by the way, Kingsley, she must have the best place in the mill." Kingsley continued to look sillily at her. He had not heard of Helen--he did not understand. "A place in the mill--ah, let me see," he said thoughtfully. "I've been thinking it out," went on Travis, "and there is a drawing-in machine ready for her. I understand Maggie is going to quit on account of her health." "I, ah--" began Kingsley--"Er--well, I never heard of a beginner starting on a drawing-in machine." "I have instructed Maggie to teach her," said Travis shortly. Then he beckoned to Helen: "Come." She followed Richard Travis through the mill. He watched her as she stepped in among the common herd of people--the way at first in which she threw up her head in splendid scorn. Never had he seen her so beautiful. Never had he desired to own her so much as then. "The exquisite, grand thing," he muttered. "And I shall--she shall be mine."