“Well! There am I, continuing with father and holding to father, because father loves me and I love father. I can’t so much as read a book, because, if I had learned, father would have thought I was deserting him, and I should have lost my influence. I have not the influence I want to have, I cannot stop some dreadful things I try to stop, but I go on in the hope and trust that the time will come. In the meanwhile I know that I am in some things a stay to father, and that if I was not faithful to him he would⁠—in revenge-like, or in disappointment, or both⁠—go wild and bad.”

“Give us a touch of the fortune-telling pictures about me.”

“I was passing on to them, Charley,” said the girl, who had not changed her attitude since she began, and who now mournfully shook her head; “the others were all leading up. There are you⁠—”

“Where am I, Liz?”

“Still in the hollow down by the flare.”