ame thing. Kitty Lambton was her name when he was
after her; it was a man named O'Guire she married to get away from the
old soured rascal, though he was young at the time, and mayhap a sour
young man at that. Would you say she was wrong? Would you?"

"I suppose every woman has a right to please herself in such a matter,"
he replied evasively.

"That's what I say, and it's what poor Kitty did, rest her soul, for she
is dead now, poor thing."

Her voice dropped to a softer tone suddenly, and she was silent for a
few seconds; but when she resumed her story the shrill tone, the tone
which irritated and hurt him, he knew not why, rang out again.

"But the old man would have none of it. He swore all the vengeance he
could think of against her and hers. He swore no woman should ever set
foot in this place again. He hounded the father and mother of that
unfortunate girl to their graves; he chased her and her husband from
pillar to post, robbing them, swindling them, betraying them until there
was no place on the face of the earth they could call their own, no, not
even a stick nor a shred. The devil was good to him--sure he always is
good to his own. Money came to him by the waggon-load, and ever did he
use it to hound those two unfortunates down, lower and lower until there
was no hope nor peace for them, and they wandered outcasts in the sight
of man and woman. And that's the man, that old double-dyed, heartless
scoundrel that you police flock to preserve and protect, while the likes
of Kitty and her husband are forced down and down and down to the lowest
dregs of life. Is that justice? Is that law? Is that right? Answer me
that now."

"Probably Mr. Dudgeon coloured his story a good deal when he told it:
old men usually do when they recount their youthful doings," he said
quietly. "But, in any case----"

She held out her hand impulsively.

"Wait a moment," she said. "Supposing he did. Supposing the tale is only
half true; but supposing that he did drive Kitty and her husband to the
gutter, and suppose they had children--do you think if those children
knew what that old scoundrel had done they would not be right to pay him
back in his own coin? Sure I'm glad I was able to make the old vagabond
eat his own words when I bought the place over his head. He's met one
woman in the world who has defied him. And do you know what? If I knew
where any of Kitty Lambton's children were at this moment--or her
husband, seeing she i