Excerpt from The Prize to the Hardy Puritan conscience, half-stifled out here on the fron tier, awoke to sudden life and cried aloud to him, as it did that night, when he realized that he was to be the father of a nameless child. The other men laughed at his qualms; she did not understand them; but he knew. He opened his eyes suddenly now in the warm room and, startled, stared at his daughter, all uncon scious of these dead happenings, all ignorant of the simple-hearted mother, whose little dream of happi ness had ended when her baby's life began. Most of the time he forgot her himself. But he shivered to think what it would mean to him if this gracious pres ence, who had built up the thing called home around him, had been from the first an outcast. Thank God, I married her before Vera was born! He muttered. She saw or felt his movement and, rising, went and flung her arms around him. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.