Essie's eyes followed his finger down the first column of the first page. Sarah Ann Mohr would find this week more food for thought and discussion in the Millerstown local news than in the account of men turning into lions. "If I have done injury to any one," read Essie, "I ask that they forgive me. ALVIN KOEHLER." Essie's eyes did not lift from the page for a long time. When they did, they had ceased to burn. Since her first advent into Millerstown, Essie had longed for a possession which she considered precious. Now, at last, it was hers. Now, at last, also was there hope for Alvin. CHAPTER XVIII A SILVER CHALICE WITH knees trembling and lips quivering, Katy hastened across the Hartman lawn. She was still smarting too hotly from the shock of her loss and the shame of discovery to realize how great a burden had been lifted from her shoulders by the mere sharing of her secret. Poor Alvin seemed meaner than he was, her association with him criminal, herself imbecilic. She remembered his touch with loathing, his beseeching gaze with disgust. She thought of his father, with his queer, glancing eyes, his muttering, his praying. It was no wonder that David Hartman despised them. She saw herself through David's scornful eyes; she remembered the outrageous struggle at the Sheep Stable; she could have sunk through the ground in her distress. But David had been avenged. Against her new madness of affection Katy was still struggling. By night she dreamed of David, by day she thought of David. Her care of Cassie, her sweeping and cleaning of the great house, had become labors of love. "I do not think even any more of education," mourned Katy in her alarm. "I am at last quite crazy." She hurried now into the Hartman kitchen, alarmed because she had been so long away. Cassie grew daily worse, a little less able to make the journey from her bed to the settle in the kitchen, a little more preoccupied, a little more silent. Katy's attentions troubled her, she did not like to have a hand laid upon her shoulder or an arm thrown round her. Once, when she had insisted upon going about the house, she had fainted, and Katy had sent in terror for the doctor, and Cassie had been put to bed in her little room. When she had recovered in a measure, she told Katy where she would find in the drawers of one of the great bureaus certain clothes for her laying away. It was not a cheerful position which Katy held! To-day Cassie had stayed in her bed, her cheek on her hand, her eyes closed. Often she lay thus for hours. She did not seem to think, often she did not seem to breathe. The atrophy of Cassie's mind and heart were almost complete.