"Promises--faith?" cried his startled companion; "even admitting those playful assurances of a wild, country girl's friendship, were a compact, could you be cruel enough to insist upon my fulfilling it in this desperate hour?" "Then all the interest you have expressed hitherto in my fate," pursued the stranger; "the sympathy you have led me to think you felt for one, suffering as I have suffered in the cause of my unhappy country--the hopes excited in this heart when, as I pictured a delighted life passed with you, and love, and freedom, beyond the Atlantic, you listened on, with a consenting smile--all this was but pastime for your vacant hours?" "It was wrong, I know," replied Katey yieldingly; "yet Heaven knows it was no pastime. I found you in concealment--a fugitive--hunted, you told me, by the laws for your exertions in the cause of a country I have been taught by you to deem misgoverned; I saw you superior to all those around you; you complained of cheerlessness and solitude, of ill health--I brought you books, music, all that I could judge likely to lighten your hours, and dearly am I punished for it." "But think"---- "_Think!_" cried the girl, passionately interrupting him, for the chord had jarred, "I never _thought_--till now--when all my giddy, imprudent conduct crowds on my mind as if to crush me. A few months back, and we were ignorant of each other's existence." "Would that it had continued so," he said, in a voice of sadness; "a few months more, and my memory will be to you as the nameless gravestone, telling alone that it hides the dead. Cruel, but beloved, farewell!" and he turned to depart. "Yet stay," said Katey, hurriedly. "Why not let me tell my father of this business--I mean of your story--that I know it all, and entreat of him, as I have often urged you to let me do, to interest himself with Government and procure your pardon, which he can readily obtain? I will go this instant." "And give me up to justice--for such, I assure you, will be the result of an appeal to your father." "You wrong him, believe me. He is perhaps stern and vindictive in his feelings towards those whom he considers instrumental in keeping alive a spirit of animosity and disturbance among the people; but you know not," she said with a smile, "how all-powerful is my influence with him. Yes, even at the risk of his displeasure--for he little dreams I am acquainted with you, I will tell him your sad story--there is nothing in it a brave or noble man should be afraid of. I will go to him this moment," and she moved on.