And so the years went on.  There was much discomfort, much deprivation in Reuben Miller’s house.  Food was not scarce; the farm yielded enough, such as it was, very coarse and without variety; but money was hard to get; the store seemed to be absolutely unremunerative, though customers were not wanting; and the store and the farm were all that Reuben Miller had in the world.  But in spite of the poor food; in spite of the lack of most which money buys; in spite of the loyal, tender, passionate despair of her devotion to her father, Draxy grew fairer and fairer, stronger and stronger.  At fourteen her physique was that of superb womanhood.  She had inherited her body wholly from her father.  For generations back, the Millers had been marked for their fine frames.  The men were all over six feet tall, and magnificently made; and the women were much above the average size and strength.  On Draxy’s fourteenth birthday she weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, and measured five feet six inches in height.  Her coloring was that of an English girl, and her bright brown hair fell below her waist in thick masses.  To see the face of a simple-hearted child, eager but serene, determined but lovingly gentle, surrounded and glorified by such splendid physical womanhood, was a rare sight.  Reuben Miller’s eyes filled with tears often as he secretly watched his daughter, and said to himself, “Oh, what is to be her fate! what man is worthy of the wife she will be?” But the village people saw only a healthy, handsome girl, “overgrown,” they thought, and “as queer as her father before her,” they said, for Draxy, very early in life, had withdrawn herself somewhat from the companionship of the young people of the town.

As for Jane, she loved and reverenced Draxy, very much as she did Reuben, with touching devotion, but without any real comprehension of her nature.  If she sometimes felt a pang in seeing how much more Reuben talked with Draxy than with her, how much more he sought to be with Draxy than with her, she stifled it, and, reproaching herself for disloyalty to each, set herself to work for them harder than before.

In Draxy’s sixteenth year the final blow of misfortune fell upon Reuben Miller’s head.

A brother of Jane’s, for whom, in an hour of foolish generosity, Reuben had indorsed a note of a considerable amount, failed.  Reuben’s farm was already heavily mortgaged.  There was nothing to be done but to sell it.  Purchasers were not plenty nor eager; everybody knew that the farm must be sold for whatever it would bring, and each man who thought of buying hoped to profit somewhat, in a legitimate and Christian way, by Reuben’s extremity.

Reuben’s courage would have utterly forsaken him now, except for Draxy’s calmness.  Jane was utterly unnerved; wept silently from morning till night, and implored Reuben to see her brother’s creditors, and beg them to release him from his obligation.  But Draxy, usually so gentle, grew almost stern when such suggestions were made.