She had grown to womanhood submitting meekly to an iron rule; but none the less betraying an acute repugnance for certain doctrines preached by her father.

It seemed to the old man a long way to look back; and then a long way to come forward again, past the death of his girl-wife while their child was still tender, down to the amazing iniquity of that child's revolt, in her thirty-first year.

Dumbly, dutifully, had she submitted to all his restrictions and severities, stonily watching her girlhood go, through a fading, lining and hardening of her prettiness.
Then all at once, with no word of pleading or warning, she had done the monstrous thing.

He awoke one day to know that his beloved child had gone away to marry the handsome, swaggering, fiddle-playing good-for-nothing who had that winter given singing lessons in the village.
Only once after that had he looked upon her face--the face of a withered sprite, subdued by time.

The hurt of that look was still fresh in him, making his mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to the two little boys asleep in the west bedroom.