, and perforce her
expression changed again to a sad yearning, "you must hear me. And you
must trust me, for I have never pretended. You shall see him if it is in
my power."

She looked at me so piteously that I was near to being unmanned.

"I will trust you," she whispered.

"I have seen him," I said. She started violently, but I laid my hand on
hers, and by some self-mastery that was still in her she was silent. "I
saw him in Louisville a month ago, when I returned from a year's visit to
Philadelphia."

I could not equivocate with this woman, I could no more lie to her sorrow
than to the Judgment. Why had I not foreseen her question?

"And he hates me?" She spoke with a calmness now that frightened me more
than her agitation had done.

"I do not know," I answered; "when I would have spoken to him he was
gone."

"He was drunk," she said. I stared at her in frightened wonderment. "He
was drunk--it is better than if he had cursed me. He did not mention me?
Or any one?"

"He did not," I answered.

She turned her face away.

"Go on, I will listen to you," she said, and sat immovable through the
whole of my story, though her hand trembled in mine. And while I live I
hope never to have such a thing to go through with again. Truth held me
to the full, ludicrous tragedy of the tale, to the cheap character of my
old Colonel's undertaking, to the incident of the drum, to the
conversation in my room. Likewise, truth forbade me to rekindle her
hope. I did not tell her that Nick had come with St. Gre to New Orleans,
for of this my own knowledge was as yet not positive. For a long time
after I had finished she was silent.

"And you think the expedition will not get here?" she asked finally, in a
dead voice.

"I am positive of it," I answered, "and for the sake of those who are
engaged in it, it is mercifully best that it should not. The day may
come," I added, for the sake of leading her away, "when Kentucky will be
strong enough to overrun Louisiana. But not now."

She turned to me with a trace of her former fierceness.

"Why are you in New Orleans?" she demanded.

A sudden resolution came to me then.

"To bring you back with me to Kentucky," I answered. She shook her head
sadly, but I continued: "I have more to say. I am convinced that
neither Nick nor you will be happy until you are mother and son again.
You have both been wanderers long enough."

Once more she turned away and fell into a revery. Over the h