, come over to see Miss Faith. Shall I bring him in?"
asked Glory, at the door.

"Will you mind it, aunt?" asked Faith.

"I? No," said Miss Henderson. "Will you mind my being here? That's the
question. I'd take myself off, without asking, if I could, you know."

"Dear Aunt Faith! There is something I have to say to Mr. Rushleigh
which will be very hard to say, but no more so because you will be by to
hear it. It is better so. I shall only have to say it once. I am glad
you should be with me."

"Brave little Faithie!" said Mr. Rushleigh, coming in with hands
outstretched. "Not ill, I hope?"

"Only tired," Faith answered. "And a little weak, and foolish," as the
tears would come, in answer to his cordial words.

"I am sorry. Miss Henderson, that I could not have persuaded this little
girl to go home with me last night--this morning, rather. But she would
come to you."

"She did just right," Aunt Faith replied. "It's the proper place for her
to come to. Not but that we thank you all the same. You're very kind."

"Kinder than I have deserved," whispered Faith, as he took his seat
beside her.

Mr. Rushleigh would not let her lead him that way yet. He ignored the
little whisper, and by a gentle question or two drew from her that which
he had come, especially, to learn and speak of to-day--the story of the
fire, and her own knowledge of, and share in it, as she alone could tell
it.

Now, for the first time, as she recalled it to explain her motive for
entering the mill at all, the rough conversation she had overheard
between the two men upon the river bank, suggested to Faith, as the
mention of it was upon her lips, a possible clew to the origin of the
mischief. She paused, suddenly, and a look of dismayed hesitation came
over her face.

"I ought to tell you all, I suppose," she continued. "But pray, sir, do
not conclude anything hastily. The two things may have had nothing to do
with each other."

And then, reluctantly, she repeated the angry threat that had come to
her ears.

Pausing, timidly, to look up in her listener's face, to judge of its
expression, a smile there surprised her.

"See how truth is always best," said Mr. Rushleigh. "If you had kept
back your knowledge of this, you would have sealed up a painful doubt
for your own tormenting. That man, James Regan, came to me this morning.
There is good in the fellow, after all. He told me, just as you have,
and as Hardy did, the words he spoke in passi