ive me," replied Grizel at once.

"Nor do I care whether you care," he rapped out, all the time wishing he
could strike himself; "but I'm the doctor of this place, and when your
mother was ill you should have come straight to me. What had I done that
you should be afraid of me?"

"I am not afraid of you," she replied, "I am not afraid of anyone, but
mamma was afraid of you because she knew you had said cruel things about
her, and I thought--I won't tell you what I thought." But with a little
pressing she changed her mind and told him. "I was not sure whether you
would come to see her, though I asked you, and if you came I knew you
would tell her she was dying, and that would have made her scream. And
that is not all, I thought you might tell her that she would be buried
with a stake through her--"

"Oh, these blackguard laddies!" cried McQueen, clenching his fists.

"And so I dared not tell you," Grizel concluded calmly; "I am not
frightened at you, but I was frightened you would hurt my dear darling
mamma," and she went and stood defiantly between him and her mother.

The doctor moved up and down the room, crying, "How did I not know of
this, why was I not told?" and he knew that the fault had been his own,
and so was furious when Grizel told him so.

"Yes, it is," she insisted, "you knew mamma was an unhappy lady, and
that the people shouted things against her and terrified her; and you
must have known, for everybody knew, that she was sometimes silly and
wandered about all night, and you are a big strong man, and so you
should have been sorry for her; and if you had been sorry you would have
come to see her and been kind to her, and then you would have found it
all out."

"Have done, lassie!" he said, half angrily, half beseechingly, but she
did not understand that he was suffering, and she went on, relentlessly:
"And you knew that bad men used to come to see her at night--they have
not come for a long time--but you never tried to stop their coming, and
I could have stopped it if I had known they were bad; but I did not know
at first, and I was only a little girl, and you should have told me."

"Have done!" It was all that he could say, for like many he had heard of
men visiting the Painted Lady by stealth, and he had only wondered, with
other gossips, who they were.

He crossed again to the side of the dead woman, "And Ballingall's was
the only corpse you ever saw straiked?" he said in wonder, she had done