haw is rich and proud and
pitiless. Everybody is afraid of him. But Roving Kate is not afraid.
Indeed, he seems to be more afraid of her. Wherever he is, she is there.
She is wild and bony and ragged. She is, or pretends to be, half
demented. She tells fortunes with strange antics and gesticulations,
scrawling her prognostications upon stray slips of paper. But Benjamin
Grimshaw is the main object of her attention. She hates him, and hates
him all the more terribly because she once loved him. For Roving Kate,
the Silent Woman, was once Kate Fullerton, Squire Fullerton's pretty
daughter. And Benjamin Grimshaw had loved her, and betrayed her, and
spurned her, and married another. In the village cemetery you might have
seen a tombstone bearing her name. Her father erected it to show that
she was dead _to him_ for ever. Poor Kate had never known her mother.
And so, in the course of the story, Benjamin Grimshaw had two sons, only
one of whom he recognized. For Kate Fullerton was the mother of the
other. And, in her shame and her anger and her hate, Kate resolved to
follow the father of her base-born child all the days of his life; and
there she stands--unkempt, repulsive, menacing--always near him, the
living embodiment of _the sin of his youth_.

Amos Grimshaw, his petted and pampered son, comes to the gallows. He is
convicted of murder upon the highway. The father is in court when the
Judge pronounces the awful sentence. And, of course, Roving Kate is
there. Ragged as ever, the Silent Woman is waiting for him as he comes
down the steps. She shoots out a bony finger at him, as, bowed and
broken, he passes into the street. He turns and strikes at her with his
cane.

'Go away from me,' he cries. 'Take her away, somebody! I can't stand it!
She's killing me! Take her away!'

His face turns purple and then livid. He reels and falls headlong. He is
dead! Three days later they bury him. Roving Kate stands by the
graveside, strangely changed. She is decently dressed; her hair is
neatly combed; the wild look has left her eyes. She looks like one whose
back is relieved of a heavy burden. She scatters little red squares of
paper into the grave, her lips moving silently. These are her last
curses. Barton Baynes and his schoolmaster, Mr. Hacket, are standing by.

'_The scarlet sins of his youth are lying down with him in the dust_,'
whispers the master to his pupil as they walk away together.

V

This is terrible enough--the th