stranger.'"

Philip had never found it difficult, because from the first the subject
of those letters had been herself.

At the last meeting between Jacques and his son, the man in his
extremity had turned to the boy for aid, pleading with the terrified,
bewildered little fellow as if with a man who understood. And Philip,
already old beyond his years, born with the instinct of the priest and
confessor, had understood.

"You will tell me of her?" Jacques had pleaded. "I have no friend but
you, boy. You will take care of her? You will write me how she does?"

Philip had not failed his father. Every detail of Kate's life was known
to the man in prison, her comings and goings, her daily habits, her
work, her successes and failures, the very color of the gowns she wore.
There had been from the first a sort of glamour about her, to the
imagination of a lonely, dreaming boy. Even at fourteen he had been a
little in love with Kate Kildare, as a page may be in love with a queen.
With the passing years, more of Philip's self than he knew had crept
into those weekly letters to his father; so that if Jacques Benoix was a
stranger to him now, he was no stranger to his father.

"It is queer, though," he mused, still thinking aloud. "Often as I write
to him, he rarely answers. Once a year, on my birthday, and again at
Christmas. It is as if he wanted me to forget him!"

"I think he does," she said. "That is why he never writes to me at all.
I have had only one letter, begging me never to come there, nor to allow
you to come there. He even asked me not to write to him, and I have not
written. But--forget Jacques!" She smiled proudly. "He does not know us,
does he? Nor himself. Why, there is not a man or woman in the county who
has forgotten him!"

Philip was staring at her in amaze. "You mean to say that _you_ never
hear from him, either, and that you have never seen him--?"

Her face paled. "Yes, I have seen him. Once. There were convicts working
on one of the roads near Frankfort. I spoke to them as I passed--men in
that dress always interest me now. One of them did not answer me, did
not even lift his head to look at me. I looked more closely--"

"It was he?"

She nodded. "Working on the road like a common laborer, a negro! Oh, I
went to the warden about it myself. I railed at him, asked him how he
dared put such a man at that work, a gentleman. He heard me through
patiently enough--after all, what business was it of min