Couldn't
she die or live without the priest?

"You are going to get well now," he whispered in reply.

"Send for Father Ryan, for God's sake," she again repeated, so forcibly
that Kitty caught the words.

"I will go for him," she said eagerly, but the doctor interfered.

"No, I will see Mr. Rush;" for the anger of that man and his future
hostility was not a pleasing prospective to the easy-going doctor, ever
ready to propitiate.

Mr. Rush was like a lion, aroused from his sleep, in which he had found
temporary oblivion of a torturing headache.

The doctor's words were not audible in the sick room, but Kitty
distinctly heard the reply of Thornton Rush:

"I tell you I don't care. I don't believe it will make the least
difference. If she has a mind to worry, let her worry; I won't have a
Catholic priest in the house. I'll have the devil first. If she is going
to live, she will live, anyhow. I have never thought she would die yet.
For God's sake, let me alone, and don't waken me again, no matter what
happens."

The doctor returned with lugubrious visage. But Kitty's was radiant.

She was seized with a thought or an inspiration, and she whispered:

"I will take all the blame upon myself; he cannot more than kill me. It
is a good time--he has left orders to be let alone. The priest can come
and go before he knows it," and she darted out without another word.

The doctor and Mrs. Moffat looked smilingly across at each other in the
faint lamp-light, but neither made a movement for Kitty's detention. As
the faithful girl had said, "the priest came and went" before the master
knew anything about it. And Althea, having passed through her earthly
purgatory, and now hovering, as she thought, upon the borders of death,
had been baptized by water into newness of life, and been strengthened
by that heavenly food, which is more and diviner than the bread of
angels.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.

Althea was very weak, but continued slowly to recover. Several days
elapsed, during which time Thornton's pain in the head had been upon the
increase, and other alarming symptoms had been developed. These were
intensely strengthened by the imprudence of a meddlesome neighbor.

Curtis Coe was Windsor's merchant tailor. He may have been more than the
ninth part of a man in some respects; but when, under pretence of a
friendly call, he informed Thornton Rush, already very sick, that the
priest, Father Ryan,