a warm discussion. Katherine soon lost the sense of
what they were saying. Her heart was throbbing as if a sudden stunning
blow had been dealt her, and the words, "Theft is theft, whatever the
circumstances that seem to extenuate it," beat as if with a
sledge-hammer on her brain.

If for a theft, value perhaps sixpence, this poor woman, who had been
driven to it by the direst necessity, was exposed to trial, to the gaze
of careless lookers-on, to loss of character, to the exposure of her
sore want, to the degradation of imprisonment, what should be awarded to
her, Katherine Liddell, an educated gentlewoman, for stealing a large
fortune from its rightful owner, and that, too, under no pressure of
immediate distress? True, she firmly believed that had her uncle not
been struck down by death he would have left her a large portion of it;
that she had a better right to it than a stranger. Still that did not
alter the fact that she was a thief. If every one thus dared to infringe
the rights of others, what law, what security would remain?

These ideas had never quite left her since the day she had written
"Manuscript to be destroyed" on the fatal little parcel, which had been
ever with her during her various journeyings since. More than once she
had made up her mind to destroy it, but some influence--some terror of
destroying this expression of what her uncle once wished--had stayed her
hand; her courage stopped there. Perhaps a faint foreshadowing of some
future act of restitution caused this reluctance, unknown to herself,
but certainly at present no such possibility dawned upon her. She felt
that she held her property chiefly in trust for others, especially her
nephews. Often she had forgotten her secret during her mother's
lifetime, but the consciousness of it always returned with a sense of
being out of moral harmony, which made her somewhat fitful in her
conduct, particularly as regarded her expenditure, being sometimes
tempted to costly purchases, and anon shrinking from outlay as though
not entitled to spend the money which was nominally hers. Nathan's
parable did not strike more humiliating conviction to Israel's erring
king than Bertie Payne's "ower true tale." At length she mastered these
painful thoughts, and sought relief from them in speech.

"What do you think of doing for this poor woman?" she asked, taking a
screen to shelter her face from the fire and observation.

"I have not settled details in my own m