. No one else did. Seemed like other
folks thought I'd poison 'em. She'd come an' see me an'--help me. She was
sick the last day she came, and when she was going home she fainted in
the street, I heard folks say, I never saw her after that."

She brushed a tear from her face with the shawl again.

"So as she didn't mind much, or suffer," she said, "t'ain't so bad to
think of. She wasn't one to be able to stand up against things. She'd
have died if she'd been me. I'd be glad enough to die myself, if I wasn't
afraid. She'd cry over me when I wasn't crying over myself. I've been
beat about till I don't mind, like I used. They're a hard lot down at the
Mills."

"And you," said Latimer, "what sort of a life have you been leading?"

His voice was harsh and his manner repellant only because Nature had
served him the cruel turn of making them so. He was bitterly conscious as
he spoke of having chosen the wrong words and uttered them with an
appearance of relentless rigour which he would have made any effort to
soften.

Baird made a quick movement towards the girl.

"Have you any work?" he asked. "Do you need help? Don't mind telling us.
My friend is to take charge of your church at the Mills."

The girl interrupted him. She had turned miserably pale under Latimer's
question.

"'Tain't no church of mine!" she said, passionately; "I h'ain't nothin'
to do with it. I never belonged to no church anyhow, an' I'm leadin' the
kind o' life any girl'd lead that hadn't nothin' nor nobody. I don't
mean," with a strangled sob, "to even myself with _her_; but what'ud she
ha' done if she'd ha' slipped like I did--an' then had nothin' nor--nor
nobody?"

"Don't speak of her!" cried Latimer, almost fiercely.

"'Twon't hurt her," said the girl, struggling with a sob again; "she's
past bein' hurt even by such as me--an' I'm glad of it. She's well out of
it all!"

She turned as if she would have gone away, but Baird checked her.

"Wait a moment," he said; "perhaps I can be of some service to you."

"You can't do nothin'," she interrupted. "Nobody can't!"

"Let me try," he said; "take a note to Miss Starkweather from me and wait
at the house for a few minutes. Come, that isn't much, is it? You'll do
that much, I'm sure."

She looked down at the floor a few seconds and then up at him. It had
always been considered one of his recommendations that he was so
unprofessional in his appearance.

"Yes," she said, slowly, "I can do that,