hich the good
Pastor had feared, albeit she was quick to correct its exhibition. The
languid men listened to her with half-aggressive, half-amused interest,
and some of the satisfaction of taking a bitter but wholesome tonic.
It was not until she reached the bed at the farther end of the ward
that she seemed to meet with any check.

It was occupied by a haggard man, with a long white moustache and
features that seemed wasted by inward struggle and fever. At the first
sound of her voice he turned quickly towards her, lifted himself on his
elbow, and gazed fixedly in her face.

"Kate Howard--by the Eternal!" he said, in a low voice.

Despite her rigid self-possession the woman started, glanced hurriedly
around, and drew nearer to him.

"Pendleton!" she said, in an equally suppressed voice, "What, in God's
name, are you doing here?"

"Dying, I reckon--sooner or later," he said grimly, "that's what they
do here."

"But--what," she went on hurriedly, still glancing over her shoulder as
if she suspected some trick--"what has brought you to this?"

"YOU!" said the colonel, dropping back exhaustedly on his pillow. "You
and your daughter."

"I don't understand you," she said quickly, yet regarding him with
stern rigidity. "You know perfectly well I have NO daughter. You know
perfectly well that I've kept the word I gave you ten years ago, and
that I have been dead to her as she has been to me."

"I know," said the colonel, "that within the last three months I have
paid away my last cent to keep the mouth of an infernal scoundrel shut
who KNOWS that you are her mother, and threatens to expose her to her
friends. I know that I'm dying here of an old wound that I got when I
shut the mouth of another hound who was ready to bark at her two years
after you disappeared. I know that between you and her I've let my old
nigger die of a broken heart, because I couldn't keep him to suffer
with me, and I know that I'm here a pauper on the State. I know that,
Kate, and when I say it I don't regret it. I've kept my word to YOU,
and, by the Eternal, your daughter's worth it! For if there ever was a
fair and peerless creature--it's your child!"

"And she--a rich woman--unless she squandered the fortune I gave
her--lets you lie here!" said the woman grimly.

"She don't know it."

"She SHOULD know it! Have you quarreled?" She was looking at him
keenly.

"She distrusts me, because she half suspects the secret, and I hadn