ed face and figure
something which repelled him almost beyond self-control.

Perhaps the girl saw, while she did not comprehend it. She regarded him
helplessly.

"I--I don't know--hardly--why I came," she faltered, twisting the corner
of her shawl.

She had been rather pretty, but the colour and freshness were gone from
her face and there were premature lines of pain and misery marking it
here and there.

Baird moved a chair near her.

"Sit down," he said. "Have you walked all the way from Janway's Mills?"

She started a little and gave him a look, half wonder, half relief, and
then fell to twisting the fringe of her poor shawl again.

"Yes, I walked," she answered; "but I can't set down. I h'ain't but a
minute to stay."

Her clothes, which had been shabby at their best, were at their worst
now, and, altogether, she was a figure neither attractive nor
picturesque.

But Baird saw pathos in her. It was said that one of his most charming
qualities was his readiness to discover the pathetic under any guise.

"You came to ask Mr. Latimer some questions, perhaps?" he said.

She suddenly burst into tears.

"Yes," she answered, "I--I couldn't help it."

She checked herself and wiped her tears away with the shawl corner almost
immediately.

"I wanted to know something about _her_," she said. "Nobody seemed to
know nothin', only that she was dead. When they said you'd come home, it
seemed like I couldn't rest until I'd heard something."

"What do you want to hear?" said Latimer.

It struck Baird that the girl's manner was a curious one. It was a manner
which seemed to conceal beneath its shamefaced awkwardness some secret
fear or anxiety. She gave Latimer a hurried, stealthy look, and then her
eyes fell. It was as if she would have read in his gloomy face what she
did not dare to ask.

"I'd be afraid to die myself," she stammered. "I can't bear to think of
it. I'm afraid. Was she?"

"No," Latimer answered.

The girl gave him another dull, stealthy look.

"I'm glad of that," she said; "she can't have minded so much if she
wasn't afraid. I'd like to think she didn't mind it so much--or suffer."

"She did not suffer," said Latimer.

"I never saw nothin' of her after the last day she came to Janway's
Mills," the girl began.

Latimer lifted his eyes suddenly.

"She went to the Mills?" he exclaimed.

"Yes," she answered, her voice shaking. "I guess she never told. After
that first night she stood by me