own. Nora kept everything, and she reasoned if Nora
had made up her mind that Barney was to stay in North Carolina the
chances were heavy that there he would remain.

But the boy continued to sob appealingly, and Katrine, who had that real
intelligence which no sooner sees a desired end than it finds a way to
accomplish it, put her sorrow aside for practical thinking.

She reviewed her possessions rapidly, remembering, with a throb of pain,
some carved gold beads she had worn when "she found herself," at the age
of three. They had always seemed part of her, and, though no one had
told her, she knew they had belonged to her dead mother, "who went
away." But she felt little hesitation in giving them, if some one were
to be helped by the sacrifice.

"Wait, Barney," she cried, "here, where Nora can't see you! I'll be back
in a moment! They're just some old beads," she said, apologetically,
with a splendid dissimulation, as she gave them to the boy. "But old
Mrs. Quinby, at Marlton, tried to buy them of Nora once when they were
being mended. Offer them for sale now. And, Barney," she went on, "if
you could reconcile it to your conscience to keep it from your mother
that I've given them to you; if you could with no lying, and yet without
telling the truth--" She hesitated.

"Ye needn't worry, Miss Katrine," he answered, drying his eyes on his
sleeve. "It's been betwixt and between the truth with her all my life.
But if the time ever comes when I can serve ye--" He choked. "Ah!" he
cried, "words are poor things! But ye'll see!" And with this he was gone
at a breakneck run down the Swamp Hollow toward the Marlton road.

And the strangeness is that Katrine's hidden gift of old beads to a
half-grown Irish boy, in the woods of North Carolina, should wreck a
Metropolitan "first night," shake the money-market of two continents,
and change the destinies of many lives.

XII

THE REAL FRANCIS RAVENEL

On the afternoon of the day upon which Frank said good-bye to Katrine he
took the evening train North. It was his intention to see Ravenel no
more for a long time, certainly not while the Dulanys remained. He was
afraid of himself, for there came to him at every thought of the affair
a glow of admiration at the words Katrine had thrown back at him:

_"It could never have been like that. I should have died first."_

He had given her up, but the fight was not finished, and the struggle
went on constantly. In the silences