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 nobody that can help me—now. The sorrow that I've had! I'm past crying over it now, but once I used to lie awake the whole night long and just cry and cry until I was too tired even to do that. Then I got hard and careless, and I hated everything—just as I hate somebody now."

"Yes," said Hepworth. "I remember that I thought as much when we talked that day in the barn. I wondered at it then, because—"

"You won't wonder, sir, when you hear what I have to tell you," she said, quickly.

"Sit down and tell me about it," he said. "I should like to know."

She hesitated for a moment, and then took a chair near the table. There was a book lying close to her hand that Hepworth had left there some hours before, and as she spoke she took it up and turned the leaves over aimlessly. Something in the action suggested to him the hopelessness of the tale that she told.