"In the evening some one brought a letter. I lighted a candle and took this letter to him, crowding it into his hand. I wanted him to notice me. I saw him study the envelope, then tear it open and look at a little slip of green paper that fell out. It was money, you understand, for pictures he had sent to New York. I knew this at once. I'd heard them talk of its coming and of wonderful things they'd do with it when it did come. I was glad in an instant, for I thought that now we could get my mother back out of the ground. I was sure we could when he held the green slip close to the candle and began to laugh. It wasn't the way he usually laughed, it was louder and longer, but it was the first sound I'd heard from him, and it made me happy. I began to laugh myself as loud as I could, and danced before him, and his laugh went still higher at that. I ran for my jacket and mittens and cap. I wanted him to stop laughing and hurry along. I pulled his arm and he stopped laughing and looked down at me. I shouted 'Hurry--let's hurry and bring her back--let me carry the money!' He caught my shoulder and looked so astonished, then he burst into that loud laugh again, after he'd made me say it over. I ran for his overcoat, too, but when I came with it I saw he wasn't laughing at all. He was crying, and it was so much like his laugh that I hadn't noticed the change." He had kept his eyes on the portrait while he spoke. He stopped abruptly now, turning to the listening woman, searching her face with new signs of confusion. "I--I didn't know I was telling you all that." She did not answer at once. "And you came here after that?" she said at last. "Yes; my father found this place. He wanted to be alone. I think he began to die when my mother went. He couldn't live without her. He taught me what he could, about books and pictures, but I couldn't have been much to him. I think it hurt him that I looked like her--he said I looked like her. He worked on that portrait to the very last, even on the morning of the day he died." "What was your father's name?" "Gilbert Denham Ewing. I was named for him." "And your mother's name before marriage was----" "I'm ashamed that I never knew. It must have been spoken often, but I was so young; it never stayed in my mind. And a little while before he died my father burned all his letters and papers. I've wondered about their life long ago before I came, but I think my father meant me not to know. He had some reason." "I am glad you have told me all you did know," she said. "But you have made _me_ glad," he assured her, returning to his livelier manner. "Your mother's first name"--she asked--"what did your father call her?" "Oh, that--Katharine. He called her Kitty." "Kitty!" She repeated it after him, softly, as if she spoke it in compassion to the portrait.