What she was thinking of as she sang with Kerry's coat in her hand it
would be hard to discover by the process of elimination, as the
detectives say when tracking down a criminal. It is, however, of no
consequence; but it was clear that the song she sang had moved her, for
there was the glint of a tear in her eye as she turned towards the house,
the words of the lyric singing themselves over in her brain:

"Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes,
Held my hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow,
Home I saw upon the hearth, heaven stood there in the skies'
Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?"'

She knew that no lover had left her; that none was in the habit of laying
his warm cheek against her brow; and perhaps that was why she had said
aloud to herself, "Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"
Perhaps--and perhaps not.

As she stepped forward towards the door she heard a voice within the
house, and she quickened her footsteps. The blood in her face, the look
in her eye quickened also. And now a figure appeared in the doorway--a
figure in shirt-sleeves, which shook a fist at the hurrying girl.

"Villain'!" he said gaily, for he was in one of his absurd, ebullient
moods--after a long talk with Jesse Bulrush. "Hither with my coat; my
spotless coat in a spotted world,--the unbelievable anomaly--

"'For the earth of a dusty to-day
Is the dust of an earthy to-morrow.'"