e grass-blade
shook a little.

"Where is the man who buried the dead woman and built the Little Kopje?"

She pointed to the rude oblong that was meant for a grave.

"There." The slender finger climbed the heap of boulders. "And there is
where the Kid sits when she is a bad girl and runs away." She peeped up in
his face almost slyly. "Then they call her: 'You Kid, come here! Dirty
little slut, take the broom and sweep out the bar! Idle little devil,
fetch water for the kitchen!'" Her smile was peaked and elfish. She laid a
cunning finger beside her pursed-up lips. "But though they scold and call
bad names, they never come and fetch her down off the Little Kopje. Beat
her when she comes in, and serve her right, the impudent little scum! But
never come near the Little Kopje, because of the spook the Barala boy saw
there one night when the moon was big and shining."

He said, with infinite pity in his tone, and a compassionate mist rising
in those keen bright eyes of his:

"They are cruel to the Kid, both Bough and the woman?"

She began to shake. The guardian Sister, who sat sewing a little way
behind her, looked up anxiously at her charge. He pacified her with a
glance, and, taking one of the slender trembling hands in a firm, kind
clasp, repeated his question:

"Always cruel, cruel! But Bough----"

A spasm contracted her face. At the base of the slender throat something
throbbed and throbbed. She whispered brokenly:

"When the woman went away----"

Her slender fingers closed desperately upon his. Her heart shook her, and
Fear was in her eyes. Her voice vibrated and shuddered at her white lips
as a caught moth vibrates and shudders in a spider-web. She began again:

"When the woman went away, Bough----"

Her eyes quailed and flickered; her pale and quivering face was convulsed
by a sudden spasm of awful fear. The muscles of her whole body stiffened
in the immovable rigor of terror. Only her head jerked from side to side,
like that of some timid creature of the wilds held captive in crushing
folds or crunching fangs. And he comprehended all; and understood all, in
one lightning leap of intuition, as he saw.

"Hush!" He stopped her with his authoritative eyes and the firm,
reassuring pressure of his hand. "Forget that--speak of it no more. Try
and tell me who lies here, under these grasses and flowers that you water
every day?"

He moved the hand he held to touch the grave, and the spasm that
contracted her