eks burn like a coal. Mr. Muller been
here?"

"Oh dear, no!" pushing him into a chair. "Is there nothing to think of
but Mullers and marrying?"

She poured out the tea, made room for the plates of cold chicken and
toast among the books, and turned the supper into a picnic, as she had
done hundreds of times, gossiping steadily all the while. But Mr.
Guinness saw that there was something coming.

When the tea was gone she sat down on the wooden bench beside him,
leaning forward on his knee: "Father, you promised once to show me
before I went away all that you had belonging to--your other child."

Guinness did not speak at once, but sat smoking his cigar. It went out
in his mouth. He made a motion to rise once or twice, and sat down
again. "To-night, Kitty?"

"Yes, to-night. We are alone."

He got up at last slowly, going to a drawer in the oak cases which she
had never seen opened. Unlocking it, he took out one or two Latin
school-books, a broken fishing-rod, a gun and an old cap, and placed
them before her. It was a hard task she had set him, she saw. He lifted
the cap and pointed to a long red hair which had caught in the button,
but did not touch it: "Do you see that? That is Hugh's. I found it there
long after he was gone. It had caught there some day when the boy jerked
the cap off. He was a careless dog! Always jerking and tearing!"

Catharine was silent until he began putting the things back in the
drawer: "Father, there's no chance, is there? You could not be mistaken
in that report from Nicaragua? You never thought it possible that your
son might yet be alive?"

"Hugh's dead--dead," quietly. But his fingers lingered over the book and
gun, as though he had been smoothing the grave-clothes about his boy.

"The proof was complete, then?" ventured Kitty.

He turned on her: "Why do you talk to me of Hugh, Catharine? I can tell
you nothing of him. He's dead: isn't that enough? Christian folks would
say he was a man for whom his friends ought to think death a safe
ending. They have told me so more than once. But he was not altogether
bad, to my mind." He bent over the drawer now. Kitty saw that he took
hold of the red hair, and drew it slowly through his fingers: his face
had grown in these few minutes aged and haggard.

"'Behold, how he loved him!'" she thought. He had been the old man's
only son. Other men could make mourning for their dead children, talk of
them all their lives; but she knew her mother w