“You-all keep yo’ hands off Zalie an’ me!  I kin larn my gal all she needs to know.  All other larnin’ would harm her, and no Popish folk ain’t going to tech what’s mine.”

So that was what kept them apart!

Sister Angela drew back.  For a moment she did not understand; then she smiled and bent nearer.

“You think us Catholics?  We are not; but if we were it would be just the same.  We are friendly women who really want to be neighbourly and helpful.”

“You all tote a cross!” Becky was interested.

“Yes.  We bear the cross—­it is a symbol of what we try to do—­you need not be afraid of us, and if there is ever a time when you need us—­come to Ridge House.”

After that Becky had apparently disappeared, but often and often when the night was stormy, or dark, she had walked stealthily down the trail and taken her place by the windows of Ridge House.  She knew the sunny, orderly kitchen in which such strange food was prepared; she knew the long, narrow dining room with its quaint carvings and painted words on walls and fireplace; she knew the tiny room where the Sisters knelt and sang.  One or two of the tunes ran in Becky’s brain like haunting undercurrents; but best of all, Becky knew the living room upon whose generous hearth the fire burned from early autumn until the bloom of dogwood, azalea, and laurel filled the space from which the ashes were reluctantly swept.  Every rug and chair and couch was familiar to the burning eyes.  The rows of bookshelves, the long, narrow table and—­The Picture on the Wall!

To that picture Becky went now.  She had never been able to see it distinctly from any window.  It was the Good Shepherd.  The noble, patient face bent over the child on the man’s breast had power to still Becky’s distraught mind.  She could not understand, but a groping of that part of her that could still feel and suffer reached the underlying suggestion of the artist.  Here was someone who was doing what, in a vague and bungling way, Becky herself had always wanted to do—­shield the young, helpless thing that belonged to her.

The old face twitched and the soiled, crinkled arms—­so empty and yearning—­hugged the trembling body.  And so Sister Angela found her.

The three years since Angela had seen Becky Adams had taught her much of her people—­she called them her people, now.

“I am so glad to see you, Aunt Becky,” she said, smiling and pointing to a chair by the hearth, quite in an easy way.  “Are you tired after your long walk?”

“Sorter.”  Becky came over to the chair and sank into it.  Then she said abruptly:  “Zalie’s gone!”

The brief statement had power to visualize the young creature as Angela had once seen her:  pretty as the flower whose name she bore, a little shy thing with hungry, half-afraid eyes.

“Is she—­dead?” Sister Angela’s gaze grew deep and sympathetic.

“Not ’zactly—­not daid—­jes now.”  Poor Becky, breaking through her own reserve and agony, made a pitiful appeal.