e experience and the knowledge of
what it might bring.

"Well, it came about that I came to America to gain the money I
lacked, and having learned a bit, in spite of Oxford and the schools,
of a practical nature, I took a position in his bank. All was very
well until I met her. Now there were the rosy cheeks and the dark hair
for you! She looked more like an Irish lass than a Scotch one. But
they're not so different, only that the Irish are for the most part
comelier.

"Now this banker had a very sweet wife, and she was kind to the Irish
lad and welcomed him to her house. I'm thinking she liked me a bit--I
liked her at all events. She welcomed me to her house until she was
forbid. It was after they forbid me the house that I took to walking
with Katherine, when all thought she was at Sunday School or visiting
a neighbor, or even--at the last--when no other time could be
stolen--when they thought her in bed. We walked there by the river
that flows by the town of Leauvite."

Again Larry Kildene paused and shot a swift glance at the young man
at his side, and noted the drawn lids and blanched face, but he kept
on. "In the moonlight we walked--lad--the ground there is holy now,
because she walked upon it. We used to go to a high bluff that
made a sheer fall to the river below--and there we used to stand and
tell each other--things we dreamed--of the life we should live
together--Ah, that life! She has spent it in heaven. I--I--have
spent the most of it here." He did not look at Harry King again. His
voice shook, but he continued. "After a time her brother got to
know about it, and he turned me from the bank, and sent her to live
with his father's sisters in Scotland.

"Kind old ladies, but unmarried, and too old for such a lass. How
could they know the heart of a girl who loved a man? It was I who knew
that. What did her brother know--her own twin brother? Nothing,
because he could see only his own thoughts, never hers, and thought
his thoughts were enough for wife or girl. I tell you, lad, men err
greatly in that, and right there many of the troubles of life step in.
The old man, her father, had left all his money to his son, but with
the injunction that she was to be provided for, all her days, of his
bounty. It's a mean way to treat a woman--because--see? She has no
right to her thoughts, and her heart is his to dispose of where he
wills--not as she wills--and then comes the trouble.

"I ask you, lad, if you loved