master-hand. He admired it heartily, and catching Sarah's glance watching him, he nodded back to her his approval of it. As he left the room he looked once more at her, and most men would have done the same. Not, perhaps, because of the perfect oval of her face, or of the charm of her large, lustrous gray eyes, but because such a loving, noble soul looked forth from them that one forgot whether the body was there or not.
There was an old tie between Sarah Benson and her master, one which she probably knew nothing of. But Jonathan remembered that he had loved the girl's mother, that he had carried her dinner-can, and gone with her to chapel, and tended the looms next hers, for two happy years. And he knew now that Sarah was very dear to him, though he had never suspected the love until it had become a part of his daily life and dearest hopes.
For when Sarah first entered his mill she was only a child ten years old, and many changes had taken place since. Jonathan, then on the road to fortune, had achieved success, and the only child that his wife left him had been recently married to Anthony Aske, the young