chair pointed out to her. The man glanced sharply at the strongly-knit young 11 figure, vibrant with that vital thing called “life.” He sighed and dropped back limply. There followed a lengthy silence, until at last Thomas Singleton shifted his feet and spoke slowly, with a grim setting of his teeth.

“I have much to say to you. Sit back farther in your chair and don’t stare at me so.”

His tones were fretful, like those of a man sick of living, yet trying to live. He dropped his chin into the palm of his hand and lapsed into a meditative gloom.

Virginia leaned back, but only in this did she obey, for her eyes were still centered on the man in silent attention. She had little awe of him within her buoyant young soul, but much curiosity lay under the level, penetrating glance she bent upon her father. Here was a man who, according to all the human laws of which Virginia had ever heard, belonged to her, and to her alone. There were no other children and no mother. Yet so little did she know of him that she wouldn’t have recognized him had she met him in the road. Singleton’s uneasy glance, seeking the yellow, licking flames in the grate, crossed hers.

“I told you not to stare at me so, child!” he repeated.

This time the violet eyes wavered just for an instant, then fastened their gaze once more upon the speaker.

“I don’t remember how you look,” she stammered, “and I’d like to know. I can’t tell if I don’t look, can I?”

Her grave words, and possibly the steady, piercing gaze, brought a twitch to the father’s lips. Surely his child had spoken the truth. He himself had almost forgotten he had a girl; that she was the only living creature who had a call upon the slender thread of his life. Had he lived differently, the girl in front of him would have been watching him for some other reason than curiosity.

“That’s why I’m looking at you, sir,” she explained. “If any one on the hills’d say, ‘How’s your father looking, 12 Jinnie?’ if I hadn’t looked at you sharp, sir, how’d I know?”

She sighed as her eyes roved the length of the man once more. The ashes in the grate were no grayer than his face.

“You’re awful thin and white,” she observed.

“I’m sick,” replied Singleton in excuse.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” answered Virginia.

“You’re quite grown up now,” remarked the man presently, with a meditative air.

“Oh, yes, sir!” she agreed. “I’m a woman now. I’m fifteen years old.”

“I see! Well, well, you are quite grown up! I heard you playing just now. Where did you ever learn such music?”

Jinnie placed her hand on her heart. “I got it out of here, sir,” she replied simply.

Involuntarily Singleton straightened his rounded shoulders, and a smile touched the corners of his mouth. Even his own desperate condition for the moment was erased from his mind in the pride he felt in his daughter. Then over him swept a great regret. He had missed more than he had gained in his travels abroad, in not living with and for the little creature before him.

Her eyes were filled with contemplation; then the lovely face, in its exquisite purity, saddened for a moment.

“Matty isn’t going to take me across her knee never any more,” she vouchsafed, a smile breaking like a ray of sunshine.

The blouse slipped away from her slender throat, and she made a picture, vivid and beautiful. The fatherhood within Thomas Singleton bounded in appreciation as he contemplated his daughter for a short space, measuring accurately the worth within her. He caught the wonderful 13 appeal in the violet eyes, and wished to live. God, how he wanted to live! He would! He would! It meant gathering his supremest strength, to be put forth in efforts of mere existing. Something out of an unknown somewhere, brought to him through the stormy, wonderful music he had heard, made the longing to live so vehement that it hurt. Then the horror of Virginia’s words drifted through his tortured brain.

“What?” he ejaculated.

“Now I’m fifteen,” explained the girl, “I get a woman’s beating with a strap, you see. A while ago I got one that near killed me, but I never cried a tear. Matty was almost scared to death; she thought I was dead. Matty can lick hard, Matty can.”

Virginia sighed in recollection.

“You don’t mean to say the nigger whipped you?”

The girl shook her curly head.

“Whipped me! No! Matty don’t whip; she just licks with all her muscle.... Matty’s muscle’s as strong as a tree limb.”

Mr. Singleton bowed his head. It had never occurred to him in all those absent years that the child was being abused. How simply she had told her tale of suffering!

“But I’m fifteen now,” she repeated gladly, “so I stand up, spread my feet like this”—she rose and suited the action to the words—“and Matty lays her on damn hard, too.”

He covered his mouth with one thin hand, choked down a cough, and endeavored to change the subject.

“And school? Have you been to school?”

“Oh, yes!” assured the girl, sitting down again. “I went to school back in the hills. There were only five boys and me. There wasn’t any girls. I wish there had been.” 14

“You like girls, I imagine, then,” said her father.

“Oh, yes, sir! Yes, indeed, sir! I often walk five miles to play a while with one. None of the mothers around Mottville Corners’ll let their girls be with me. You see, this house has a bad name.”

A deep crimson dyed the man’s ashen skin. He made as if to speak, but Jinnie went on.

“Over in the Willow Creek settlement the kids are awful bad, but I get along with ’em fine, because I love ’em right out of being hellish.”

She was gazing straight into her father’s face in all sincerity, with no trace of embarrassment.

“You know Mrs. Barker, the housekeeper you left me with?” she demanded a little later. “Well, she died when I was ten. Matty stayed, thinking every day you’d come home. I suppose mebbe I did grow up sort of cussed, and I suppose everybody thinks I’m bad because I’ve only a nigger to live with, and no mother, not—not even you.”

Singleton partly smothered an oath which lengthened itself into a groan, looked long at the slim young figure, then at the piquant face.

“Just lately I’ve been wanting some one of my own to love,” she pursued. “I only had Milly and her cats. Then the letter come saying you’d be here—and I’m very glad.”

The smile lighting her face and playing with the dimples in her cheeks made Thomas Singleton feel as if Heaven’s breath had touched him.

“Do you care at all for me?” he asked gloomily.

There had come over him a desire that this winsome girl,—winsome in spite of her crudity,—would say she did. Wonder, love, sympathy, were alive in her eyes. Jinnie nodded her head.

“Oh, yes, sir!” she murmured. “Of course I love you! I couldn’t tell you how much.... I love—why, I even 15 love Mose. Mose’s Matty’s man. He stole and et up all our chickens—but I love him just the same. I felt sorry about his killing the hens, because I loved them too.”

“I see,” sighed the father.

“Now there’s Molly—I call her Molly the Merry––”

“Who’s Molly the Merry?” interrupted Singleton.

“Old Merriweather’s daughter. She’s prettier than the summer roses, and they’re pretty, believe me. Her smiles’re warmer’n the sun.”

“Ah, yes! I remember the Merriweathers. Is the old man still alive?”

“Well, yes, but he’s as good as dead, though. Ain’t walked in