party at a neighbor's some miles away. Everybody would wake up, dance some more, and go to bed again, to wake late again in the morning.
Hildegarde had come to her father's house, and this was what she had found. And everybody was commenting on her good fortune. But was it good fortune? In the home of her aunts there had been a standard of simple and severe living. But there had been that last Christmas morning when he had come back from church with Hildegarde and her mother. There had been the warmth and brightness of the big kitchen. Miss Olivia and Miss Catherine about the table, and Elizabeth Musgrove saying grace:
"O Thou, who wast once a Babe in Bethlehem, make us love good things and peaceful things and keep our hearts strong."
Well, her heart had been strong, dear lady! And her child had leaned on her strength. And now that same child was shut in with a selfish man, subject to his whims and tempers. Was this life any better than the other? He found himself chafing at the thought of it, restless, and after a while he got a horse from the stable and went at a good pace down to the Bay, where there was a low pier that extended well into the water.
The ice was thick near the shore, but grew thinner farther out, until at last the water was free from it. And in that free water a few ducks were swimming. They rose as they saw him, and were off in a low flight above the rushes. He reflected that if he had had a gun he might have brought down one or two of them. He wondered if the game laws prohibited shoot-
