"Our little girl is learning to submit herself," said Grandfather contentedly. "Matthew tells me so. That's the first lesson learned—quiet. She is like the noble Sister Anastasia whose pride was softened. Have you seen Ellen at any time?"
"Once," answered Amos without lifting his head. He spoke indifferently and bent more closely over his work, as though he had reached an important paragraph. It was the acting of a lie, for he thought of Ellen in school and at home and especially in the long evenings when it was supposed that his sacred task occupied his mind. He had been thinking of her when Grandfather spoke; for her benefit he was making a strange plan.
Last Sunday afternoon he had gone for a walk. Even then he had not been quite honest with himself, for he had pretended that his object was exercise, when deep in his heart he hugged a hope of seeing Ellen. An intense natural shyness and a consciousness of guilt forbade him Matthew's door. It was unthinkable that he should "go to see" Ellen!
Making a long détour he had arrived at last in the woodland back of the Levis house and there waited for darkness to become complete, when he intended to go to the edge of the woods and look down upon the lighted windows and perhaps see Ellen's shadow moving back and forth.
The November evening was still and he had taken only a few steps into the woodland when he heard the sound of crying. Ellen herself was no more tender-hearted and he at once moved forward rapidly, then stood still, trying to decide upon the direction from which the sound came. He could now hear nothing; perhaps his footsteps on the dry leaves had betrayed his approach. Then he heard the sound again nearer at hand. It was not the whimper of a trapped animal, it was the smothered sobbing of a human being. He went forward swiftly. Then again he paused. The low western sun cast a single level beam through the clouds; the light fell upon Ellen, a mournful figure in a black shawl upon a stump, Ellen alone in the twilight, Ellen unreconciled to her bereavement, Ellen changed and forlorn.
"It is I. Can I help you, Ellen?" he asked breathlessly.
Ellen sprang to her feet, her black shawl trailing.
"Oh, is it you?" She drew a long breath of relief. Amos was negligible—she had thought that it was Matthew! It made little difference whether Amos observed her woes.
"You can persuade them to let me go away," she said despairingly. "I haven't anything to live for, I'm all alone." Then she recovered herself. "Please forget this. No one can do anything." She rubbed her eyes furiously with a wet handkerchief and pulled her shawl round her. "I hadn't any business to talk about it."