they won't try it twice on my lass, that's all about it."
If Aske had struck him he could have borne it better, for, as he told himself, "I would hev given him such a threshing as would hev brought him down to his right place varry quick." But he could imagine no circumstance which would excuse such an outrage on his daughter.
When he came to his breakfast-table in the morning Eleanor was waiting for him. She looked so sweet and fair that it was delightful to see her again making out his coffee, and he felt his heart thrill with a fierce sense of triumph over his son-in-law.
"Whatever did ta do to him, Eleanor, to make him lift his hand to thee?" he asked.
Her bright eyes scintillated, and with a shrug of her shoulders, she looked steadily at her father, and answered with an inimitable air of mockery, "I laughed at him." And under the fascination of her eyes and manner Jonathan set down his cup, and echoed the laugh whose image was on her face. He might have then understood how a man of Anthony Aske's passionate temper had been laughed into an irrita-
