[Illustration: The streets were noisy with hawkers]

It was during this time of excitement that Katherine said one morning,
at breakfast, "Bram wait one minute for me. I am going to do an errand
or two for my mother.

"It is a bad time, Katherine, you have chosen," said Batavius. "Full of
men are the streets, excited men too, and of swaggering British
soldiers, whom it would be a great pleasure to tie up in a halter. The
British I hate,--bullying curs, everyone of them!"

"Well, I know that you hate the British, Batavius. You say so every
hour."

"Katherine!"

"That is so, Joanna."

Madam looked annoyed. Joris rose, and said, "Come then, Katherine, thou
shalt go with me and with Bram both. Batavius need not then fear for
thee."

His voice was so tender that Katherine felt an unusual happiness and
exultation; and she was also young enough to be glad to see the familiar
streets again, and to feel the pulse of their vivid life make her heart
beat quicker.

At Kip's store, Bram left her. She had felt so free and unremarked, that
she said, "Wait not for me, Bram. By myself I will go home. Or perhaps I
might call upon Miriam Cohen. What dost thou think?" And Bram's large,
handsome face flushed like a girl's with pleasure, as he answered, "That
I would like, and there thou could rest until the dinner-hour. As I go
home, I could call for thee."

So, after selecting the goods her mother needed at Kip's, Katherine was
going up Pearl Street, when she heard herself called in a familiar and
urgent voice. At the same moment a door was flung open; and Mrs. Gordon,
running down the few steps, put her hand upon the girl's shoulder.

"Oh, my dear, this is a piece of good fortune past belief! Come into my
lodgings. Oh, indeed you shall! I will have no excuse. Surely you owe
Dick and me some reward after the pangs we have suffered for you."

She was leading Katherine into the house as she spoke; and Katherine had
not the will, and therefore not the power, to oppose her. She placed the
girl by her side on the sofa; she took her hands, and, with a genuine
grief and love, told her all that "poor Dick" had suffered and was still
suffering for her sake.

"It was the most unprovoked challenge, my dear; and Neil Semple behaved
like a savage, I assure you. When Dick was bleeding from half a dozen
wounds, a gentleman would have been satisfied, and accepted the
mediation of the seconds; but Neil, in his blind passion, broke the co