l, and the woman who had abetted him. The old hand on the table
that had little more strength in it than when it wore a hedger's glove
near eighty years ago, closed with the grip of all the force it had,
and the lamp-globe rang as the tremor of his arm shook the table.

"Oh, I pray God there is a hell," came audibly from as kind a heart as
ever beat. "_How_ I pray God there is a hell!" Then the stress of his
anger seemed to have exhausted him, for he lay back in his armchair
with his eyes closed. In a few moments he drew a long breath, and as
he wiped the drops from his brow, said aloud to himself: "I wish the
kitten would come." He seemed happier only from speaking of her. And
then sat on and waited--waited as for a rescue--for Sally to come and
fill up the house with her voice and her indispensable self.

Something of an inconsistency in the attitude of his mind may have
struck across the current of his reflections--something connected with
what this indispensable thing actually was and whence--for his thoughts
relented as the image of her came back to him. Where would those eyes
be, conspirators with the lids above them and the merry fluctuations of
the brows; where would those lips be, from which the laughter never
quite vanished, even as the ripple of the ocean's edge tries how small
it can get but never dies outright; where the great coils of black hair
that would not go inside any ordinary oilskin swimming-cap; where the
incorrigible impertinence and flippancy be we never liked to miss a
word of; where, in short, would Sally be if she had never emerged from
that black shadow in the past?

Easy enough to say that, had she not done so, something else quite as
good might have been. Very likely. How can we limit the possible to the
conditional-praeter-pluperfect tense? But then, you see, it wouldn't
have been Sally! That's the point.

Sally's mother had followed such thoughts to the length of almost
forgiving the author of her troubles. But she could not forgive him
considered also as the author of her husband's. The Major could not
find any forgiveness at all, though the thought of Sally just sufficed
to modify the severity of his condemnation. Leniency dawned.

"Yes--yes; I was wrong to say that. But I couldn't help it." So said
the old man to himself, but quite as though he spoke to some one else.
He paused a little, then said again: "Yes; I was wrong. But oh, what
a damned scoundrel! And _what_ a woman!" Then