checked her for it. It was her style, and style is the stamp of
individual intellect, as language is the stamp of race. Certainly it
is an habitual deviation from accuracy, but it is a deviation for the
purpose of communicating freedom and feeling. The pen is neither
grammar nor dictionary, its purpose is to be the interpreter of the
heart.

One morning in September she had a strange feeling of inability to
work. The fog dulled her mind. Nothing was firm and certain in her
ideas. She found herself dreaming of incoherent and mysterious things,
a woof of thought, as airy as the fog itself. "I'll put the paper and
pencil awa'," she said, "and I'll build up the fire, and make some
good bread, then if I am no mair awake I'll red up the house. There's
dust on everything and little wonder if there's dust on my mind, too."
Then someone tried to open the door and she called out, "Wait a wee!
I'll slip the bolt in a minute." When she had done so, she opened the
door and Neil, in a low broken voice said, "Christine! Let me in! Why
am I bolted out?" and he whimpered out the words, like a hurt child,
as he passed her.

She looked at him in amazement. She could hardly believe her own
senses. This was not her brother--a wan, trembling man, with the
clothing of a laborer, and his hair clipped close to his head.

"Bolt the door again," he said, in his old authoritative way, "and
give me something to eat. I am sick with hunger, and cold, and misery
of all kinds."

"I'll do all that, Neil, but where hae you been this lang time, and
what makes you sae poor, and sae broken down?"

"Get me something to eat, and I will tell you."

So she left him crouching over the fire, with his elbows on his knees,
and his face hidden in his hands. And she asked him no more questions,
but when he had had a good meal, he said, "You asked where I had been,
Christine? I hae been in prison--in the House of Correction. I was put
there by that villain Rath, who accused me of obtaining money under
false pretenses."

"I feared something of the kind. A man came here a short time before
mother died----"

"Mother dead!"

"Ay, going on eight months now."

And he cried out like some hurt animal, and Christine hasted to say,
"She left her love and her blessing. At the very last, she spoke o'
you, Neil."

"The man you were speaking of, what did he say?"

"He asked me for the particulars o' my loan to you. He pitied me, and
said you had a way o' getting m