Mrs. Latimer went to the front door, and in a few seconds returned. The girl was with her and entered the room slowly. She was very pale and her eyes were dilated and she breathed fast as if frightened. She glanced at John Baird and stopped. "I didn't know anyone else was here," she said. "I will go away, if you wish it," said Baird, the sympathetic tone returning to his voice. "No," said Latimer, "you can do her more good than I can. This gentleman," he added to the girl, "is my friend, and a Minister of God as well as myself. He is the Rev. John Baird." There was in his eyes, as he addressed her, a look which was like an expression of dread--as if he saw in her young yet faded face and figure something which repelled him almost beyond self-control. Perhaps the girl saw, while she did not comprehend it. She regarded him helplessly. "I--I don't know--hardly--why I came," she faltered, twisting the corner of her shawl. She had been rather pretty, but the colour and freshness were gone from her face and there were premature lines of pain and misery marking it here and there. Baird moved a chair near her. "Sit down," he said. "Have you walked all the way from Janway's Mills?" She started a little and gave him a look, half wonder, half relief, and then fell to twisting the fringe of her poor shawl again. "Yes, I walked," she answered; "but I can't set down. I h'ain't but a minute to stay." Her clothes, which had been shabby at their best, were at their worst now, and, altogether, she was a figure neither attractive nor picturesque. But Baird saw pathos in her. It was said that one of his most charming qualities was his readiness to discover the pathetic under any guise. "You came to ask Mr. Latimer some questions, perhaps?" he said. She suddenly burst into tears. "Yes," she answered, "I--I couldn't help it." She checked herself and wiped her tears away with the shawl corner almost immediately. "I wanted to know something about _her_," she said. "Nobody seemed to know nothin', only that she was dead. When they said you'd come home, it seemed like I couldn't rest until I'd heard something." "What do you want to hear?" said Latimer. It struck Baird that the girl's manner was a curious one. It was a manner which seemed to conceal beneath its shamefaced awkwardness some secret fear or anxiety. She gave Latimer a hurried, stealthy look, and then her eyes fell. It was as if she would have read in his gloomy face what she did not dare to ask. "I'd be afraid to die myself," she stammered. "I can't bear to think of it. I'm afraid. Was she?" "No," Latimer answered. The girl gave him another dull, stealthy look. "I'm glad of that," she said; "she can't have minded so much if she wasn't afraid. I'd like to think she didn't mind it so much--or suffer." "She did not suffer," said Latimer. "I never saw nothin' of her after the last day she came to Janway's Mills," the girl began. Latimer lifted his eyes suddenly.