n and a heart of
leather. It needed no confession from Kilquhanity's own lips to explain
by what hard paths he had come to the reckless hour when, at Blackpool,
he had left her for ever, as he thought. In the flush of his criminal
freedom he had married again--with the woman who shared his home on the
little hillside, behind the Parish Church, she believing him a widower.
Mary Muddock, with the stupidity of her class, had never gone to the
right quarters to discover his whereabouts until a year before this day
when she stood in the Avocat's library. At last, through the War Office,
she had found the whereabouts of her missing Matthew. She had gathered
her little savings together, and, after due preparation, had sailed away
to Canada to find the soldier boy whom she had never given anything but
bad hours in all the days of his life with her.

"Well," said the woman, "you're a lawyer--have you nothing to say? You
pay his pension--next time you'll pay it to me. I'll teach him to leave
me and my kid and go off with an Irish cook!"

The Avocat looked her steadily in the eyes, and then delivered the
strongest blow that was possible from the opposite side of the case.
"Madame," said he, "Madame, I regret to inform you that Matthew
Kilquhanity is dying."

"Dying, is he?" said the woman, with a sudden change of voice and
manner, but her whine did not ring true. "The poor darlin', and only
that Irish hag to care for him! Has he made a will?" she added eagerly.

Kilquhanity had made no will, and the little house on the hillside, and
all that he had, belonged to this woman who had spoiled the first part
of his life, and had come now to spoil the last part.

An hour later the Avocat, the Cure, and the two women stood in the chief
room of the little house on the hillside. The door was shut between the
two rooms, and the Little Chemist was with Kilquhanity. The Cure's hand
was on the arm of the first wife and the Avocat's upon the arm of the
second. The two women were glaring eye to eye, having just finished
as fine a torrent of abuse of each other and of Kilquhanity as can be
imagined. Kilquhanity himself, with the sorrow of death upon him, though
he knew it not, had listened to the brawl, his chickens come home to
roost at last. The first Mrs. Kilquhanity had sworn, with an oath that
took no account of the Cure's presence, that not a stick nor a stone
nor a rag nor a penny should that Irish slattern have of Matthew
Kilquhanity'