papers incriminating him? Ah! why
carry the hideous feud further? Why blast the melancholy repose of the
living, by fastening this stain upon the dead? But they could not. She
knew it. She could herself refute any proof brought forward. She would
tell all. She would reveal their tender relationship, and surely then
any one, knowing the young man's nature, would scout the assertion of
his willfully shooting Wesley. But surely Olympia and Mrs. Sprague must
be able to tell, and tell decisively, the circumstances in the tragedy.
She would go to them. She owed this to the living; she owed it still
more imperatively to the dead. She had not seen Olympia since her
return. Mrs. Sprague had been too infirm to see her when she called. But
she would not heed rebuffs now. In such a cause, on such a mission, she
would have stood at the Sprague door a suppliant until even the
obstinacy of her father would have relented. On her way across the
square she saw Merry coming from the post. She turned out of her way,
and hurrying to the near-sighted spinster held out her hand,
saying, softly:

"Ah, Miss Merry, I'm so glad to see you! I have been meaning to call on
you ever since I heard of your return, but, what with sorrow and
illness, I have put it off, and now I want you to take me home with you.
Will you not?"

The pleading tone, the caressing clasp of the hand, the sadly changed
face, the somber black weeds, made the voice and figure so much unlike
the old Kate, that Merry stood for an instant confused and blushing as
she stammered:

"Bless me, Miss Kate, I--I--shouldn't have known you. Ah, I am very glad
to see you; sisters will be very glad to see you, too. Do, do come right
along with me. I'm afraid the parlor won't be very sightly, but you
won't mind, will you?"

Kate squeezed the hand still resting in her own, and drawing the long
veil back over face, she walked silently with the puzzled spinster,
unable to broach the theme she had at heart. Merry spared her the
torture of going at it obliquely.

"I have just been at the Spragues. Poor dears, they are in dreadful
distress. Mrs. Sprague is preparing to go in search of the body, but
Olympia won't give in that Jack is killed. She says that if he had been
she certainly would have known it in Richmond, for there are couriers
twice a day from the rebel outposts to the capital; that the Atterburys
had taken special measures to learn the fate of the escaped prisoners;
that, beside