fe."

Again she whispered: "Get married!"

"We hope to in 1844. I have agreed to meet her by the big pine tree on
the river bank at eleven o'clock the third of June, 1844. We are looking
forward to that day."

A kind of shadow seemed to come out of her spirit and rest upon her face
and for a moment she looked very solemn. I suppose that she divined the
meaning of all that. She shook her head and whispered:

"Money thirst!"

A tall, slim woman entered the room then and said that supper was ready.
Kate rose with a smile and I followed her into the dining-room where two
tables were spread. One had certain dishes on it and a white cover,
frayed and worn. She led me to the other table which was neatly covered
with snowy linen. The tall woman served a supper on deep, blue china,
cooked as only they could cook in old New England. Meanwhile I could
hear the voice of the aged squire--a weird, empty, inhuman voice it was,
utterly cut off from his intelligence. It came out of the troubled
depths of his misery.

So that house--the scene of his great sin which would presently lie down
with him in the dust--was flooded, a hundred times a day, by the unhappy
spirit of its master. In the dead of the night I heard its despair
echoing through the silent chambers.

Kate said little as we ate, or as we sat together in the shabby, great
room after supper, but she seemed to enjoy my talk and I went into the
details of my personal history. How those years of suffering and silence
had warped her soul and body in a way of speaking! They were a poor fit
in any company now. Her tongue had lost its taste for speech I doubt
not; her voice was gone, although I had heard a low plaintive murmur in
the words "my boy."

The look of her face, even while I was speaking, indicated that her
thoughts wandered restlessly, in the gloomy desert of her past. I
thought of that gay bird--like youth of hers of which the old man with
the scythe had told me and wondered. As I was thinking of this there
came a cry from the aged squire so loud and doleful that it startled me
and I turned and looked toward the open door.

Kate rose and came to my side and leaning toward my ear whispered:

"It is my father. He is always thinking of when I was a girl. He wants
me."

She bade me good night and left the room. Doubtless it was the outraged,
departed spirit of that golden time which was haunting the old squire. A
Bible lay on the table near me and I sat reading