It was Agnes Drummond who made this astonished outcry coming into the old-fashioned drawing-room, where she had been told there was one who wanted a word with her. “Just say there is one that would fain speak a word” had been Kirsteen’s announcement of herself. Agnes was about Kirsteen’s age but she had never left the shelter of her home, nor ever thought for herself or taken any step in life alone--and she was in reality ten years younger than the matured and serious young woman who was her contemporary. She was tall and slim, a willowy girl gliding into the dim room in her deep mourning, like a shadow. Kirsteen was also in black, but without any of those insignia of crape which mark the legitimate mourner. She was standing in front of one of the dim windows, deep set in the thick wall, with small panes and heavy woodwork, intercepting as much light as possible. Agnes recognized Kirsteen rather from something characteristic in her figure and movement than by her face. “It is just me,” Kirsteen said, with a quick drawing of her breath. “Have ye come home?” Then Agnes paused, and with something of the importance of a person to whom a great and mournful distinction has come, added, “Ye know what great trouble we are in?” “It is for that that I came here!” “You are very kind!” said Agnes with some surprise, and then she added, “We knew that--ye were friends!” “I am not come,” said Kirsteen, “to talk--for that I cannot do--I have come to ask you, travelling night and day--come to ask you--for the handkerchief he had in his hand!” A sob escaped her as she spoke, but her eyes were dry. “The handkerchief! Oh, Kirsteen, what are ye asking? Anything else; my mother will not part with it while she lives, there is upon it,” the girl stopped, struggling with her tears, “a stain--of his blood.” For some minutes there was no sound in the dark room, but of Agnes’s voice weeping, and from Kirsteen now and then a sob which seemed to rend her breast. “She must give it to me,” said Kirsteen at last, “for it is mine. He took it out for my sake. Oh, a mother’s dear, dear! she has had him all his days, his name and his memory’s hers, and no one can take him from her. But that’s all I have, for my life. And I will have it, for it is mine!” “Kirsteen, you need not be violent nor speak like that, for how could my mother give it up--the last thing he ever touched, that he put to his lips?--like a kiss to us--her and me!” “No,” said Kirsteen, “for none of you. It was mine, his name is marked in the corner in my coarse red hair, that nobody ever thought anything of. He said it was like a thread of gold. He bade me to wait till he came back. Now he’ll never come back--but I’ll wait--till I go to him. Give me my handkerchief with his kiss upon it; there’s nobody has a right to touch it,--for it is mine!”