"Let him larn, pretty, let him larn. He'll be worth twice as much at fifty as he is to-day, an' so will you for that matter. They're fools that say love is for the young, Molly, don't you believe 'em." Sarah, meanwhile, passed slowly down the flagged walk under the gnarled old apple trees in the orchard. A few heavy-winged insects, awaking from the frost of the night, droned over the piles of crushed winesaps, and she heard the sound as though it came to her across a distance of forty years. They were not easy years; she was worn by their hardness, crippled by their poverty, embittered by their sorrows. "I've had a hard life," she thought. "I've had a hard life, an' it warn't fair." For the first time it occurred to her that the Providence she had served had not used her honourably in return. "Even Abner al'ays thought that Mary Hilliard was the prettiest," she added, after a minute. As she crossed the lawn at Jordan's Journey, Uncle Abednego, the butler, appeared at the back door, and detained her with an excited wave of the hand. "Lawd A'mighty, dar's bad times yer, Miss Sary!" he cried, "Miss Angela she's been mos' dead fur goin' on two hours, en we all's done sont Cephus on de bay horse arter Marse Jonathan!" CHAPTER XV SHOWS THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS Three days later the bay horse returned at a gallop with Jonathan Gay in the saddle. At the head of the steps Kesiah was standing, and she answered the young man's anxious questions with a manner which she tried to make as sympathetic as the occasion required. This effort to adjust her features into harmony with her feelings had brought her brows together in a forbidding scowl and exaggerated the harsh lines between mouth and chin. "Am I in time?" he asked in a trembling voice, and his hand reached out to her for support. "The immediate danger is over, Jonathan," she answered, while she led him into the library and closed the door softly behind them. "For hours we despaired of her recovery, but the doctors say now that if there is no other shock, she may live on for months." "I got your note last night in Washington," he returned. "It was forwarded by mail from Applegate. Is the doctor still with her?" "No, he has just gone. The rector is there now. She finds him a great comfort." "It was so sudden, Aunt Kesiah--she appeared well when I left her. What caused the attack?" "A talk she had had with Mr. Chamberlayne. It seems he thought it best to prepare her for the fact that your Uncle Jonathan left a good deal of his property--it amounts to an income of about ten thousand a year, I believe, to Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter when she comes of age. Of course it wasn't the money--Angela never gave that a thought--but the admission that the girl was his illegitimate daughter that struck so heavy a blow." "But surely she must have suspected---"