thank you with all
my heart," said Mrs. Jenkin, patting Katherine on the shoulder with
a hand that was not too clean. Then she issued a command to her
eldest daughter: "Take Percival, Gwendoline, and do you and Valerie
go and play on my bed; you can have a lovely time rolling round in
the blankets."

Shrieks of delight greeted this suggestion, and the three grandly
named but very dirty babies promptly retired to the next room,
leaving their mother and the visitor in peace, if not in quiet.
The walls of the little house were very thin, and rolling round in
the blankets appeared to be a very noisy pastime.

"If I believed that the _Mary_ had gone down, it is a very
miserable woman I should be to-day," said Mrs. Jenkin, who was
swaying gently in a rocking-chair, "for Stee is a good husband,
though perhaps he hasn't always been as straight as he ought to
have been. But that was when Oily Dave was in power here. It is
like master, like man, you know, and Stee is desperate easy led,
either wrong or right."

"If only we knew that the _Mary_ was safe!" moaned poor Katherine.

"I should know if it wasn't," Mrs. Jenkin answered confidently.
Then she hesitated, turned very red in the face, and burst into
impetuous speech: "I knew Stee was in danger that night last winter
when he and Oily Dave went through the snow to steal goods from
your cache, and the wolves set upon them. I perspired in sheer
horror that night, though I knew nothing about what was afoot, and
I knelt praying on the floor till Stee came home with his clothes
all torn, and told me what he had been through. Ah! that was a
dark and dreadful night; may I never see such another."

"I do not think you will," said Katherine softly. She spoke with
conviction, too, for certainly Stee Jenkin had been a very
different individual since that time.

Mrs. Jenkin wiped her eyes with a pinafore of Valerie's, which
happened to lie handy. "I don't believe in that saying about love
being blind," she remarked, with considerable energy. "I know that
I have been able to see Stee's faults plain enough, and yet he is
all the world to me. Yes, dear, you had better be wed to a faulty
man that you really love, than be tied up to an angel that you
don't love."

Katherine rose and began to struggle into her long wet mackintosh.
"I would have stayed if you had really needed me," she said; "but
all the while you can hope you are not to be pitied."

"Thank you, thank you,