nervous thinking."

Kitty suddenly got up, put her arm round her mother and kissed her.
"You needn't be afraid of me, mother. If there'd been any real danger,
I wouldn't have told you. Mr. Crozier's away, and when he comes back
he'll find his wife here, and there's the end of everything. If there'd
been danger, it would have been settled the night before he went away.
I kissed him that night as he was sleeping out there under the trees."

Mrs. Tynan sat down weakly and fanned herself with her apron. "Oh, oh,
oh, dear Lord!" she said. "I'm not afraid to tell you anything I ever
did, mother," declared Kitty firmly; "though I'm not prepared to tell you
everything I've felt. I kissed him as he slept. He didn't wake, he just
lay there sleeping--sleeping." A strange, distant, dreaming look came
into her eyes. She smiled like one who saw a happy vision, and an eerie
expression stole into her face. "I didn't want him to wake," she
continued. "I asked God not to let him wake. If he'd waked--oh, I'd
have been ashamed enough till the day I died in one way! Still he'd have
understood, and he'd have thought no harm. But it wouldn't have been
fair to him--and there's his wife in there," she added, breaking off into
a different tone. "They're a long way above us--up among the peaks, and
we're at the foot of the foothills, mother; but he never made us feel
that, did he? The difference between him and most of the men I've ever
seen! The difference!"

"There's the Young Doctor," said her mother reproachfully.

"He-him! He's by himself, with something of every sort in him from the
top to the bottom. There's been a ditcher in his family, and there may
have been a duke. But Shiel Crozier--Shiel"--she flushed as she said the