go alone: I came alone."

"He will follow you home to Berrytown, then?" for the chaplain was but
a man, and his curiosity was roused to know the exact relation between
McCall and this old-fashioned, lovable girl.

Kitty hesitated: "I think he will come to Berrytown again. There is
some business there which his wife's death will leave him free now to
attend to."

She went to a sofa and sat down: "I shall be glad to be at home,"
beginning to cry. "I want to see father."

"Broke down utterly," the chaplain told his wife, "as soon as her
terrible work was done."

As for Kitty, it seemed to her that her work in life and death was
over for ever.

"You must come back," she said when McCall put her in the cars,
looking like a ghost of herself. "Your father will be wanting to see
you. And--and Maria."

"Maria? What the deuce is Maria to me?"

It was no ghost of Kitty that came home that evening. The shy, lively
color came and went unceasingly, and her eyes sparkled.

"Poor Maria!" she whispered to her pillow as she went to bed--"poor
Maria!"

CHAPTER XV.

It was a long time before he came. Months afterward, one evening when
the express-train rushed into the depot, Catharine went down through
the walnut trees into the garden. She stopped in the shadow as a man's
figure crossed the fields. The air was cool--it was early spring. The
clouds in the west threw the Book--house into shadow. Hugh Guinness,
coming home, could see the narrow-paned windows twinkling behind the
walnut boughs. It was just as he had left it when he was a boy. There
was the cow thrusting her head through a break in the fence he had
made himself; the yellow-billed ducks quacked about the pond he had
dug in the barnyard; the row of lilacs by the orchard fence were just
in blossom: they were always the latest on the farm, he remembered. He
saw Kitty, like the heart of his old home, waiting for him. Her white
dress and the hair pushed back from her face gave her an appearance of
curious gentleness and delicacy.

When he came to her he took both her hands in his.

"You will come to your father now?" she said, frightened and pale.

They walked side by side down the thick rows of young saplings. There
was a cool bank overgrown with trumpet-creeper. Inside, he caught
sight of a little recess or cave, and a gray old bench on which was
just room for two.

"Will you stop here and sit down one moment?" she said.

It was nothing to him but a de