wholly under the
bedclothes, and shut her eyes as close as she could, trying in
this manner to go to sleep. But her guilty conscience gave her no
rest.

[Illustration]

Then she opened her eyes, and looked around the room; but
everything in the chamber seemed to mock and reproach her. Again
and again she shut her eyes, and tried to sleep.

The little voice within would speak now, in the silence of her
chamber. She had never felt so bad before; perhaps because she had
never been so wicked before. Do you want to know why she suffered
so much? It was because she could not keep from her mind those
hungry, crying children.

[Illustration: Kate tells the whole story.]

IV.

Poor Kate! She had certainly never been so wicked in her life
before. The words of her father still lingered in her ears, and she
could almost hear the moans of those hungry, crying children.

She had never been sent to bed in her life without her supper, and
it looked like a dreadful thing to her--perhaps even more dreadful
than it really was.

If there had been nothing but the falsehoods she had told, she
might have gone to sleep; but it was sad to think that she had
deprived the poor children of their supper, and sent them hungry to
bed. This seemed to be the most wicked part of her conduct.

I do not know how many times she turned over in the bed, nor how
many times she pulled the clothes over her eyes to shut out the sad
picture of those hungry and crying children that would come up
before her, in spite of all she could do to prevent it.

She tried to think of other things--of the scene with Fanny; of her
school; of a picnic party she had attended on the first of May; of
almost everything, indeed; but it did no good. The poor children
could not be banished from her mind.

Kate had been sick with the measles, with the scarlet fever, and
the mumps; and she remembered how bad she felt at these times; but
it seemed to her now that she would rather have all these diseases
at once than suffer from a guilty conscience.

When she was sick, her mother bent over her and pitied her, and did
all she could to ease her pain; and even when she was burning with
fever, and racked with pain, she felt happier than she did now.

She could not inform her mother how bad she felt, for that would
expose her guilt. She heard the clock strike nine, and every moment
appeared to her like an hour. Those poor little children constantly
haunted her; whet