Kate shook her head:  “He would never come.  He hates me, and I don’t blame him.  I hate myself when I think of it all.”

“But if he should walk in now?”—­he was very much afraid he would, and he was not quite ready for him yet.  What he was trying to find out was not whether Kate would be glad to see Harry as a relief to her loneliness, but whether she really loved him.

Some tone in his voice caught her ear.  She turned her head quickly and looked at him with wondering gaze, as if she would read his inmost thoughts.

“You mean that he is coming, Uncle George—­that Harry is coming home!” she exclaimed excitedly, the color ebbing from her cheeks.

“He is already here, Kate.  He slept upstairs in his old room last night.  I expect him in any minute.”

“Here!—­in this room!” She was on her feet in an instant, her face deathly pale, her whole frame shaking.  Which way should she turn to escape?  To meet him face to face would bring only excruciating pain.  “Oh, why didn’t you tell me, Uncle George!” she burst out.  “I won’t see him!  I can’t!—­not now—­not here!  Let me go home—­let me think!  No—­ don’t stop me!” and catching up her cape and parasol she was out the door and down the steps before he could call her back or even realize that she had gone.

Once on the pavement she looked nervously up and down the street, gathered her pretty skirts tight in her hand and with the fluttered flight of a scared bird darted across the park, dashed through her swinging gate, and so on up to her bedroom.

There she buried her face in Mammy Henny’s lap and burst into an agony of tears.

While all this had been going on upstairs another equally important conference was taking place in Pawson’s office below, where Harry at Pawson’s request had gone to meet Gadgem and talk over certain plans for his uncle’s future welfare.  He had missed Kate by one of those trifling accidents which often determine the destiny of nations and of men.  Had he, after attending to the business of the morning—­(he had been down to Marsh Market with Todd for supplies)—­mounted the steps to see his uncle instead of yielding to a sudden impulse to interview Pawson first and his uncle afterward, he would have come upon Kate at the very moment she was pouring out her heart to St. George.

But no such fatality or stroke of good fortune—­whatever the gods had in store for him—­took place.  On the contrary he proceeded calmly to carry out the details of a matter of the utmost importance to all concerned—­one in which both Pawson and Gadgem were interested—­(indeed he had come at Pawson’s suggestion to discuss its details with the collector and himself):—­all of which the Scribe promises in all honor to reveal to his readers before the whole of this story is told.

Harry walked straight up to Gadgem: 

“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Gadgem,” he said in his manly, friendly way.  “You have been very good to my uncle, and I want to thank you both for him and for myself,” and he shook the little man’s hand heartily.