ed into one?" He
shifted his heavy body uneasily, glancing toward the door. Chief
among the graver secret emotions which she had roused in him was
the momentary annoyance of not knowing how to deal with this
chicken-hearted little girl before him, scared, but on fire from head
to foot.

Kitty was quite confident. If it had been Maria Muller who had thus
set herself to tamper with a man's life, she would have done it
trembling, with fear and self-distrust. She had brains which could
feel and react against the passions she evoked, and were competent to
warn her of the peril of her work. But as for Kitty--

Here was Hugh Guinness before her, a Cain with the curse of God
upon him. It was clearly her business to bring him back again to his
father, and afterward convert him into a member of the church, if
possible. She went about the work with as little doubt as if it had
been the making of a pudding.

But she was shy, tender, womanly withal. Doctor McCall laughed as
he looked down at her, and spoke deliberately, as though giving his
opinion of a patient to another physician. "I'll tell you honestly my
opinion of Hugh Guinness. He was, first of all, a thoroughly ordinary,
commonplace man, with neither great virtues nor great vices, nor force
of any kind. If he had had that, he could have recovered himself when
he began to fall. But he did not recover himself."

"What drove him down in the first place?"

He hesitated: "I suppose that his home and religion became hateful to
him. Boys have unreasonable prejudices at times."

"And then, in despair--"

"Despair? Nonsense! Now don't figure to yourself a romantic Hotspur of
a fellow rushing into hell because heaven's gate was shut on him.
At nineteen Hugh Guinness drank and fought and gambled, as
other ill-managed boys do to work off the rank fever of blood.
Unfortunately--" he stopped, and then added in a lower voice,
quickly, "he made a mistake while the fever was on him which was
irretrievable."

"A mistake?" Kitty was always of an inquiring turn of mind, but now
she felt as if her curiosity was more than she could bear, while she
stood, her eyes passing over the burly figure in summer clothes and
the high-featured, pleasant face with its close-cut moustache. What
dreadful secret was hid behind this good-humored, every-day propriety
of linen duck, friendly eyes and reddish moustache over a mouth that
often smiled? You might meet their like any day upon the streets. Was