"Good gracious!" laughed Ramsey, then mused, and then asked: "Ain't you afraid for me?" Hugh said nothing, and thenceforth her tone grew more maidenly though her words remained childlike enough. "I know why you want to tell me about Phyllis," she added more softly. "You think if you don't my brothers will." "They don't know the facts," murmured Hugh. "Don't they think they do? And ain't that the trouble?" "Yes." Hugh thought her insight surprising, while she enjoyed the spiritual largeness she fancied she saw in his immobile features. "Yes," he repeated, "they think they do; that's the trouble, much of it." "How do you know they don't?" "By what they believe and by what I know." "How do you know you know?" "By my own eyes and Phyllis's own lips." "Would she tell you things she never told any one else?" "Yes, things she never dared tell any one else." Ramsey pondered, laughed, and pondered and laughed again: "Why, most of that time you was--you were--nothing but a little toddler. Didn't she love you?" "She hated me." Ramsey flinched but quickly laughed a bright unbelief to the youth's face, a face which might as well have been a wood-carving. "Oh," she cried, "how ridiculous!" "She used to flog me, cruelly." Ramsey gasped: "And you never told? Oh, why--why----?" "She said she'd kill me--and my mother. And she'd have done it, somehow." "But she's been dead ten years!" "Has she?" "Why, of course! Wasn't she on the _Quakeress_ when----?" "So was I." Ramsey flinched worse and stared away with lips apart, wondering if that was what gave him that look. "But Phyllis," she resumed, "was lost." "Was she?" "Why ... wasn't she? Mammy Joy says my uncle--in the blazing pilot-house--did you know my uncle Dan?" "Yes. That night, half an hour before the burning----" "Oh! was it at night?" "Yes. I was sitting with Phyllis, behind him, with him at the wheel, as we're sitting now behind Mr. Watson." "Uncle Dan didn't hate you, did he?" "No, indeed." "Then why didn't you tell him about Phyllis? He was her master, you know." "I did. He wormed it out of me. He was like you--in some things." The questioner flashed and stared but then dropped her eyes. "Did he--have red curls?" "Yes, redder than yours." "Humph!" ... She mused.... "I'm tired here. Let's go down by the Gilmores and walk--'thortships!" They went. "Well?--about Phyllis? What did she whip you for? Being bad?" "Bad or good was all one to Phyllis." "Wasn't--weren't--weren't you ever bad, Mr. Hugh?" "Frequently." "How were you bad?--steal jam?--eat green plums?" "Yes; had fights, went in swimming--in snake holes----" "D'd you tease your sisters?--pull their hair?--let the sawdust out o' their dolls?" "Yes, yes, all that." "Hmm! that's nothing. Basile and I--Ain't you going on? Of course, if you don't want to I--I shan't worm. Why did Phyllis--oh, pshaw!"