. It is not worth a hand-clasp. Good-bye," she
said, and turned her back upon him, not deigning to watch him go.

* * * * *

"Do you go or stay?" her brother asked, when he came in from the bank
that afternoon.

"I--go!" she said, but not with her usual bright promptness; and,
looking at her face across their little tea-table, he saw that it had
lost something of its usual serenity.

"Seen Kilbourne?" he asked.

She told him yes, with an air of careful unconcern; that he had come in
that morning; that she had told him of their contemplated departure,
and had said good-bye to him.

"I used to think----" the brother began, but she cut him short.

"I know. You often said so; don't say it any more," she said. "All that
was a mistake--and absurd."

"You know what they are saying of him, Kate? They are saying he killed
his wife."

Her dark face whitened, her dark eyes opened wide.

"They cannot!"

"They do. They say he couldn't look such a miserable, hangdog wretch
for nothing. The worst is, the boys at the college have got hold of it.
One of the little wretches wrote up on the white wall of his class-room
the other day, 'Who killed his wife?' Bryant, the science master, told
me Kilbourne took no notice, but his face was sea-green for the rest of
the morning."

"He should have thrashed the whole class--thrashed them within an inch
of their lives!"

"Well, he didn't. He did nothing." Alick dropped his voice. "Bryant
told me he looked as if he were afraid," he said.

"What beasts people are to say such things!" she burst out. "And of
such a man! The gentlest, the kindest----"

"I know, my dear. I'm sorry for poor old Kilbourne. I daresay he didn't
kill his wife; but something's happened to him, and she did die
uncommonly sudden. Anyhow, from what Bryant said, it's evident he's
lost his nerve and his courage. At that rate, he'll precious soon lose
his post."

* * * * *

Kate Grantley and Kilbourne, arriving from opposite directions, reached
his gate at the same moment, the next morning. Rudely chalked upon the
stone post was the question which had confronted Kilbourne on his
class-room walls.

He pointed to the words with his stick which shook in his hand; his
face was ashen white.

"Isn't it fitting that you and I should be confronted by that
question?" he asked her.

She stared from the writing to him.

"I don't thin