glancing down at her bony hands, scratched and scarred by blackberry thorns, thrust the heavy pail into her arms and without a word followed her in the dusty march toward the house a quarter of a mile distant; nor did he once offer to help her with her load, though the way was rough, the day intensely hot, and the weight too much for the slender shoulders of the child. Once she stubbed her toe, and he pulled her roughly to her feet, but released his hold on her arm when she fixed her black eyes full of scorn and anger upon his face; and a grim smile played an instant about his lips, but was gone again before the child could see it.

The house was reached at last, and with a sigh of relief Tabitha dropped her burden in the doorway and sank down beside it.

At the sound of steps on the gravel walk, a fussy, fidgety little woman appeared from the room beyond, and stopped in astonishment at sight of the giant coming up the steps. Before she had a chance to express her surprise, however, he spoke, addressing the panting child fanning herself with her bonnet:

"Close that screen. Can't you see those flies coming in? Go to my room, I want to have an understanding with you. Maria, Tabitha isn't to have a taste of those berries. I just found her in the middle of the road down here fighting with a boy, like the rowdy she is."

Accustomed to obey this stern father, Tabitha had withdrawn into the house, and started for the room where punishment awaited her. At his command in regard to the berries, however, she paused; then turned to where the pail stood just inside the screen, seized it, and before either of the two spectators understood what she was about, she flung bucket, berries and all into the dooryard and ground the shining fruit into the sand with her bare feet.

"There, Manx Catt," she exclaimed, "I reckon you won't have a taste of them either!"

A gasp of dismay escaped the frightened woman, but again the grim smile flitted across the face of the father, though he looked like a thunder cloud as he roared at the child, "Go straight to your room and to bed! You shall not have a thing to eat today!"

With her feet stained a dirty purple, Tabitha marched into the house and upstairs, rushed to her little bed in the corner, and threw herself full length on the counterpane, regardless of the fact that drops of berry juice still dripped from her brown legs. For fully ten minutes she lay there, fighting back the angry tears and battling with the fierce rage against her father.

"I hate him, I hate him!" she told herself over and over again. "It's bad enough to have him name me Tabitha without his acting so hateful every time he comes home. I wish he would go off to the mines and stay forever. He might take Aunt Maria, too, though she ain't so bad. We could get along with her all right; sometimes she is splendid, even if she is so fussy. Oh, dear, why can't we have a nice mother like other children have? I reckon ours wouldn't have died if she had known Aunt Maria would have to take care of us and Dad would be so horrid."

Her list of woes was fast increasing, and the tears were very near the bubbling-over point, when she heard heavy steps on the stairs.

"Oh, my sakes! that's Dad. Wonder if he will lick me this time. I 'spect he will some day, and Tom says he licks awful hard. Wonder if he will use a whip like sneaky Sneed Pomeroy. Wisht I was as big as Tom; he don't get licked any more, he's too big. Dad told me to go to bed and I ain't undressed. Maybe it's just as well if he's going to lick me."

The steps had reached the upper floor now, and she cowered in a trembling heap in the middle of her bed waiting for the door to open and let her father enter. But they continued down the hall without so much as pausing before her door, and now as her heart began to beat normally again, she heard Aunt Maria's voice saying, "There's a dreadful clutter to move if we take everything. Some of those boxes we brought from Dover have never been opened though we've been here two years now. Doesn't seem as if we had to take all that truck with us wherever we go. There hasn't been a thing in the stuff that we've needed."

"Then don't take it," cut in the man's heavy voice. "Where is it?"

Cautiously creeping off the bed, Tabitha pressed her ear to the keyhole to catch the rest of this interesting conversation, but as she listened, her face paled and a rebellious look came into the expressive black eyes.

So they were going to move away! Where would they go this time? It seemed to her that moving was all they ever did. Not that she minded the moving part of it—that was fun—but—. Here the tears came in earnest. It was her dreadful name that she minded. It didn't make any difference where they went, everyone made fun of her name, and folks no sooner got used to seeing her odd little figure and hearing her still odder name than they moved to some other town, and the same thing had to be lived over. Oh, it was too bad!

All the hot afternoon father and aunt busied themselves in the adjoining rooms, tearing open boxes, sorting, re-packing, and bundling things around generally, until finally the noise became so great that only an occasional word of the conversation could be heard by the little listener at the keyhole. As the day waned, however, and the supper hour approached, both workers ceased their pounding and went downstairs, leaving Tabitha alone with her tearful reflections in the gathering dusk. Here Tom found her, still huddled in a heap beside the door.

"Oh, Tom," she greeted him, "I thought you would never come. What made you so late? Did you know Dad had come home again? Haven't you something in your pocket to eat? I'm hungry as a wolf."

"Hush!" he said, slipping inside the door and closing it softly behind him. "Dad would be awfully mad if he knew I was here. I just got home. Had an errand across the pond after the store was closed. Here's a biscuit and some cheese. Why aren't you in bed? Aunt Maria said Dad sent you there at noon." As he spoke, the boy lifted the little sister to her feet, brushed out her crumpled dress, smoothed back her tangled hair and slipped the biscuit saved from his own supper into her eager hands.

"I did go to bed," mumbled Tabitha, with her mouth full of bread.

"You aren't undressed."

"Dad didn't say I had to undress, and he didn't say I had to stay in bed, either."

Tom grinned at her understanding of the law, but the darkness hid his face, so his amusement was lost to the small sister eating so ravenously.

"Did he lick you, Puss?"

"Nope. I thought he was going to, for he looked right mad, but I reckon I was so mad it wouldn't have hurt much."

"But it does hurt to have him whip. At least, it used to hurt me. Do be careful, Puss. I don't want him to begin whipping you. How did you make him so mad?"

The child briefly recounted the story of the morning's tribulations between bites of biscuit and cheese, growing so angry over her recital that the flood gates were opened again and she sobbed aloud in her tempest of grief.

"It's all on account of my horrid name," she told him. "I just can't be good when folks say such mean things. Joe Pomeroy is a sneak anyway, and I've been itching to lick him for a long, long time—ever since Sneed hit me with the whip he uses to drive the cows with."

"Did Sneed hit you with a whip?"

"Yes. Oh, Tom, I never meant to tell you that! Now you'll go and fight him and he will hurt you, 'cause he's so much bigger than you are, and then Dad will whale you for fighting. Thrash Joe, but don't tackle Sneed. Oh,