“Well, Lois?”

“Th’ Master has His people ’mong them very lowest, that’s not for such as yoh to speak to.  He knows ’em:  men ‘n’ women starved ‘n’ drunk into jails ‘n’ work-houses, that’d scorn to be cowardly or mean,—­that shows God’s kindness, through th’ whiskey ‘n’ thievin’, to th’ orphints or—­such as me.  Ther ‘s things th’ Master likes in them, ‘n’ it’ll come right,” she sobbed, “it’ll come right at last; they’ll have a chance—­somewhere.”

Margaret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet.  What had she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong?  Her own higher life was starved, thwarted.  Could it be that the blood of these her brothers called against her from the ground?  No wonder that the huckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy.  It was not an easy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave.  And yet—­was she to blame?  Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learned conservatism in her cradle.  Her life in the West had not yet quickened her pulse.  So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced her in this girl, just as you or I would have done.  She had her own pain to bear.  Was she her brother’s keeper?  It was true, there was wrong; this woman’s soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her birth, and Society had finished the work.  Where was the help?  She was free,—­and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all the soul’s diseases, and——­

Well, Lois was quiet now,—­ready with her childish smile to be drawn into a dissertation on Barney’s vices and virtues, or a description of her room, where “th’ air was so strong, ‘n’ the fruit ‘n’ vegetables allus stayed fresh,—­best in this town,” she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or on the riverbank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of the farms.  The fences were well built, she noticed,—­the barns wide and snug-looking:  for this county in Indiana is settled by New England people, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians.  They both leave their mark on barns or fields, I can tell you!  The two women were talking all the way.  In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this silent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about paltry, common things,—­partly, as I said, from a hope to forget herself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world which opened before her in this disjointed talk.  There were no morbid shadows in this Lois’s life, she saw.  Her pains and pleasures were intensely real, like those of her class.  If there were latent powers in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foul air and life, she knew nothing of it.  She never probed her own soul with fierce self-scorn, as this quiet woman by her side did;—­accepted, instead, the passing moment, with keen enjoyment.  For the rest, childishly trusted “the Master.”