For--her?"

"His mother."

"Oh-h!" It was a tender little cry, full of quick sympathy--the eyes
of the Lady in Black were on the stone marked "Kathleen."

"It ain't as if I did n't know how she'd feel," muttered the
gray-haired little woman musingly, as she patted her work into
completion and turned toward the Lady in Black. "You see, I was nurse
to the boy when it happened, and for years afterward I worked in the
family; so I know. I saw the whole thing from the beginning, from the
very day when the little boy here met with the accident."

"Accident!" It was a sob of anguished sympathy from Kathleen's mother.

"Yes. 'T was a runaway; and he did n't live two days."

"I know--I know!" choked the Lady in Black--yet she was not thinking of
the boy and the runaway.

"Things stopped then for my mistress," resumed the little gray-haired
woman, after a moment, "and that was the beginning of the end. She had
a husband and a daughter, but they did n't count--not either of 'em.
Nothin' counted but this little grave out here; and she came and spent
hours over it, trimmin' it with flowers and talkin' to it."

The Lady in Black raised her head suddenly and threw a quick glance
into the other's face; but the gray-haired woman's eyes were turned
away, and after a moment she went on speaking.

"The house got gloomier and gloomier, but she did n't seem to mind.
She seemed to want it so. She shut out the sunshine and put away lots
of the pictures; and she wouldn't let the pianner be opened at all.
She never sat anywhere in the house only in the boy's room, and there
everything was just as 'twas when he left it. She would n't let a
thing be touched. I wondered afterward that she did n't see where 't
was all leadin' to--but she did n't."

"'Leading to'?" The voice shook.

"Yes. I wondered she did n't see she was losin' 'em--that husband and
daughter; but she did n't see it."

The Lady in Black sat very still. Even the birds seemed to have
stopped their singing. Then the gray-haired woman spoke:

"So, you see, that's why I come and put flowers here--it's for her
sake. There's no one else now to care," she sighed, rising to her feet.

"But you haven't told yet--what happened," murmured the Lady in Black,
faintly.

"I don't know myself--quite. I know the man went away. He got
somethin' to do travelin', so he was n't home much. When he did come
he looked sick and bad. There were stories that he wa'n't quite