ed, swinging his
hand towards the open door.

"All the more reason why I should go to her, poor little woman,"
Katherine answered, then passed with a quick step into the house,
in search of garments to keep out the weather.

Mrs. Burton was preparing the early dinner, and Katherine told her
of the news Oily Dave had brought, speaking in quiet, mournful
tones which yet lacked any note of personal loss. Not even to
herself would she admit the sorrow at this time, or it would have
broken her down completely. Her instinct of going to comfort
someone else was the outcome of the strife she was having not to
collapse in a miserable, selfish breakdown.

Mrs. Burton turned white and shivered. Just so had her heavy news
come to her, and in her sympathy for Mrs. Jenkin her own wounds
bled afresh. But Katherine could not stay to comfort her, the
other poor woman needed it so much more.

"Nellie, I am going down to Seal Cove, and if Mrs. Jenkin needs me
I shall stay until the morning," she said hurriedly.

"That is good of you, dear," sobbed the elder sister, and would
have said something more, only Katherine went out of the room so
hastily that there was no chance.

Poor Katherine had fled so precipitately through fear that Nellie
should say some word about Jervis, with possibly some commiseration
for Mary, and that just now would be a thing too hard to bear.
Wrapping herself from neck to heels in a mackintosh coat, with a
cap of the same, Katherine got into her boat and pulled down river
through the driving rain. She rowed as fast as she could, not so
much from haste to be at the end of her journey as from a desire to
have no time to think.

Tying her boat up at the foot of the path leading to Mrs. Jenkin's
house, she climbed to the house door, slipping at every step. A
moment she paused before knocking, expecting to hear sobs and
wailing from the inside; but instead there came a burst of childish
laughter and a great stamping of little feet, and then she heard
Mrs. Jenkin singing in a cheerful, if not very musical, voice: "My
love is a soldier dressed in red".

Katherine stood appalled. Was it possible that Oily Dave had not
told this poor woman of the trouble which had come to her? In that
case she would have to break the heavy news herself, and at the
thought she turned coward, and would gladly have slipped away again
by the way she had come.

Mrs. Jenkin reached the end of the verse, and shrill, childish
v