ask about ye,--goin' to ask about ye
at the convent."

"At the convent?" she echoed with a frightened amazement.

"Yes, why, Lordy Sade--don't you see? You thought I was dead, and I
thought you was dead,--that's what's the matter. But I never reckoned
that you'd think me dead until Chivers allowed that it must be so."

Her face whitened in the moonlight "Chivers?" she said blankly.

"In course; but nat'rally you don't know him, honey. He only saw you
onc't. But it was along o' that, Sade, that he told me he reckoned you
wasn't dead, and told me how to find you. He was mighty kind and
consarned about it, and he even allowed I'd better slip off to you this
very night."

"Chivers," she repeated, gazing at her husband with bloodless lips.

"Yes, an awful purty-spoken man. Ye'll have to get to know him Sade.
He's here with some of his folks az hez got inter trouble--I'm
forgettin' to tell ye. You see"--

"Yes, yes, yes!" she interrupted hysterically; "and this is the Mill?"

"Yes, lovey, the Mill--my mill--YOUR mill--the house I built for you,
dear. I'd show it to you now, but you see, Sade, I'm out here standin'
guard."

"Are YOU one of them?" she said, clutching his hand desperately.

"No, dear," he said soothingly,--"no; only, you see, I giv' my word to
'em as I giv' my house to-night, and I'm bound to protect them and see
'em through. Why, Lordy! Sade, you'd have done the same--for Chivers."

"Yes, yes," she said, beating her hands together strangely, "of course.
He was so kind to bring me back to you. And you might have never found
me but for him."

She burst into an hysterical laugh, which the simple-minded man might
have overlooked but for the tears that coursed down her bloodless face.

"What's gone o' ye, Sadie," he said in a sudden fear, grasping her
hands; "that laugh ain't your'n--that voice ain't your'n. You're the
old Sadie, ain't ye?" He stopped. For a moment his face blanched as
he glanced towards the mill, from which the faint sound of bacchanalian
voices came to his quick ear. "Sadie, dear, ye ain't thinkin' anything
agin' me? Ye ain't allowin' I'm keeping anythin' back from ye?"

Her face stiffened into rigidity; she dashed the tears from her eyes.
"No," she said quickly. Then after a moment she added, with a faint
laugh, "You see we haven't seen each other for so long--it's all so
sudden--so unexpected."

"But you kem here, just now, calkilatin' to find me?" said Collinson