"My God! And you let me go to prison, and blasted my good name, and
made a beggar and a wreck of me. I won't have your help," and he
turned to Christine, and cried out passionately, "Christine!
Christine! Save me from a friend like this! Help me yoursel', dear
lassie! Help Neil yoursel'! For Mither's sake help Neil yoursel'."

She went quickly to his side. She put her arms round him--her white,
strong, motherly arms. She kissed his face, and wept with him, and she
said with a loving passion, all those soft, cruddling, little
sentences with which a mother soothes a hurt child. "I'll gie you a'
the siller you want, dearie. I'll gie it to you as a free gift. I'll
stand by ye through thick and thin. Guilty or not guilty, ye are my
ain dear brither! I don't believe you're guilty! You are feyther's
son, ye couldna be guilty. It's a' spite, and envy, and ill will.
Mither bid me be kind to you, and I will be kind, though all the
warld's against me!"

The Domine watched this scene with eyes full of tears, and a tender
fatherly look. He finally put his elbow on the table, and rested his
face in his hand, and no doubt he was praying for counsel. For he
presently stood up, and said in a kind, familiar voice, "Neil, we must
hurry, we have a little journey before us, if you get the next
Atlantic steamer. We will talk this matter fairly out, when we are
alone. It is cruel to force it on your sister. She knows, and you know
also, that you may safely put your trust in me."

Then Christine left the room, and when she returned the two men were
ready to leave the house. "Where are you taking Neil, Domine?" she
asked, in that lowered voice Fear always uses. "Where are you taking
my brother?"

"Only to Moville, Christine. There may be spies watching the outgoing
steamers--especially the American Liners--so he had better go to
Moville, and take his passage from there."

She did not answer. She bent her tearful, loving face to Neil's, and
kissed him again, and again, and whispered hurriedly--"Write to me
often, and soon," and when her hand unclasped from his, she left with
him the money she had promised. The Domine pretended not to see the
loving transaction, and the next moment the two men were wrapped up in
the thick darkness, which seemed to swallow up even the sound of their
footsteps.

That night Christine mingled her lonely cup of tea with tears, but
they were tears that had healing in them. Those to whom love has
caused no su