"I believe--I really believe it is Judy Hatch," said Molly to herself, and there was a faint displeasure in her voice. "I wonder what she is doing in the willows?" Judy Hatch it was, and at sight of Abel she had sprung up in terror from the edge of the brook, poised for flight like a wild thing before the gun of the hunter. He saw that her eyes were red and swollen from weeping, her face puckered and distorted. The pain in his own heart was so acute that for a moment he felt a sensation of relief in finding that he was not alone in his agony--that the universal portion of suffering had not been allotted entirely to himself, as he had imagined. Had she smiled, he would have brushed past her in silence, but because of her agitated and despairing look, he called her name, and when she turned toward him in bewilderment, held out his hand. It was a small accident that brought them together--nothing more than the fact that she had stooped to bathe her eyes in the stream before going on to the turnpike. "Don't go, Judy; you're in trouble, I see, and so am I," he said with bitterness. "Oh, Mr. Revercomb!" she blurted out. "I didn't want anybody to catch me in such a pass!" "I'm not anybody, Judy; I'm a poor devil that was born without sense enough to plough his furrow straight." She was a plain woman, but a pretty one would have sent him off in a panic over the meadow. He had had his lesson from a pretty woman, and the immediate effect of it was to foster the delusion that there was a mysterious affinity between ugliness and virtue. "Tell me what it is, Judy. Can I help you?" he said kindly. "It's nothin'. I am always in trouble," she answered, sobbing outright behind her sunbonnet. "Between pa and my stepmother, there isn't a spot on earth I can rest in." She looked at him and he knew immediately, from her look, that neither Solomon Hatch nor his second wife was responsible for Judy's unhappiness. For a mocking instant it occurred to him that she might have cherished a secret and perfectly hopeless passion for himself. That she might be cherishing this passion for another, he did not consider at the moment--though the truth was that her divinity inhabited not a mill, but a church, and was, therefore, she felt, trebly unapproachable. But her worship was increased by this very hopelessness, this elevation. It pleased her that the object of her adoration should bend always above her--that in her dreams he should preach a perpetual sermon and wear an imperishable surplice. "Well, I'm sorry for you," said Abel; "I'm sorry for you." And indeed he was. "You're a good, pious, virtuous girl--just the sort of a girl a man would want for his wife." "I try to be good and I don't see why I should be so--so unhappy," sobbed Judy. "There ain't a better hand for raisin' chickens and flowers and young lambs in the county."