you used to do--remember?"

His face suddenly quivered. "Are you asking me if I remember!--You have
never let me tell you how well I remember, nor what your kindness meant
to me, in those first days"--He spoke haltingly, yet with a sudden rush,
as men speak whose hearts are full. "I was the loneliest little chap in
the world, I think. Father and I had always been such friends. They
tried to be kind, there at school; but they acted as if I were something
strange; they watched me. I knew they were pitying me, remembering
father, studying me for signs of inheritance. The son of a 'killer.' It
was a dangerous time for a boy to be going through alone.... And then
you came and brought me home with you; made me play with those babies of
yours, took me with you wherever you went, read with me and discussed
things with me as if I were an equal, talked to me about father, too. Do
you think I don't know all it meant to you? Do you think I did not
realize, even then, what people were saying?"

"I have never been much afraid," said Kate Kildare quietly, "of what
people were saying."

"No. And because of you, I dared not be afraid, either. Because of you I
knew that I must stay and make my fight here, here where my father had
failed. Oh, Kate Kildare, whatever manhood I may have I owe--"

"To your father," she said.

"Perhaps. But whatever good there is in me, you kept alive."

"Dear, dear! And that's why," she cried, with an attempt at lightness,
"you feel it your duty to strike attitudes in your pulpit and keep the
good alive in the rest of us?"

"That's why," he said, soberly, "But not you, Miss Kate. I do not preach
to you. No man alive is good enough to preach to you."

"Good Heavens! When you have just been doing it!" Her laugh was rather
tremulous. "What is this--a declaration? Are you making love to me,
boy?"

He nodded without speaking.

The flush and the laughter died out of her face, leaving it very pale.
"Look here," she said haltingly, "I'd like to accept your hero-worship,
dear--it's sweet. But--If I've not been a very good woman, at least
I've always been an honest one. You said even at that time you realized
what people were saying. Did it never occur to you that what they
said--might be true?"

He met her gaze unfalteringly. "I know you," he answered.

Her eyes went dim. Blindly she stooped and drew his head to her and
kissed him.

At that moment a plaintive negro voice spoke close at hand. "Gawd sake