Upon the morning after the conversation with his daughter, Mr. Armstrong had just started on his way up the village when he met Hiram Powlett.  
"I was just coming to see you, Mr. Armstrong, if you can spare a minute."
 
"I can spare an hour—I can spare the whole morning, Mr. Powlett. I have ceased to be a working bee, and my time is at your disposal."
 
"Well, I thought I would just step over and speak to you," Hiram began, in a slow, puzzled sort of a way. "You know what I was telling you the other day about my girl?"
 
"Yes; I remember very well."
 
"You don't know, Mr. Armstrong, whether she has said anything to your daughter?"
 
"No; at least not so far as I have heard of. Mary said that they were talking together, and something was said about Miss Carne's murder; that your daughter turned very pale, and that she thought she was going to faint."
 
"That's it; that's it," Hiram said, stroking his chin, thoughtfully, "that murder is at the bottom of it. Hesba thinks it must be that any talk about it brings the scene back to her; but it does not seem to me that that accounts for it at all, and I would give a lot to know what is on the girl's mind. She came in yesterday afternoon as white as a sheet, and fainted right off at the door. I shouldn't think so much of that, because she has often fainted since her illness, but that wasn't all. When her mother got her round she went upstairs to her room, and didn't come down again. There is not much in that, you would say; after a girl has fainted she likes to lie quiet a bit; but she didn't lie quiet. We could hear her walking up and down the room for hours, and Hesba stole up several times to her door and said she was sobbing enough to break her heart. She is going about the house again this morning, but that white and still that it is cruel to look at her. So I thought after breakfast that I would put on my hat and come and have a talk with you, seeing that you were good enough to be interested in her. You will say it's a rum thing for a father to come and talk about his daughter to a man he hasn't known more than two months. I feel that myself, but there is no one in the village I should like to open my mind to about Ruth, and seeing that you are father of a girl about the same age, and that I feel you are a true sort of a man, I come to you. It isn't as if I thought that my Ruth could have done anything wrong. If I did, I would cut my tongue out before I would speak a word. But I know my Ruth. She has always been a good girl: not one of your light sort, but earnest and steady. Whatever is wrong, it's not wrong with her. I believe she has got some secret or other that is just wearing her out, and if we can't get to the bottom of it I don't believe Ruth will see Christmas," and Hiram Powlett wiped his eyes violently.
 
"Believe me, I will do my best to find it out if there is such a secret, Mr. Powlett. I feel sure from what I have seen of your daughter, that if a wrong has been done of any kind it is not by her. I agree with you that she has a secret, and that that secret is wearing her out. I may say that my daughter is of the same opinion. I believe that there is a struggle going on in her mind on the subject, and that if she is to have peace, and as you say health, she must unburden her mind. However, Mr. Powlett, my advice in the matter is, leave her alone. Do not press her in any way. I think that what you said to me before is likely to be verified, and that if she unburdens herself it will be to Mary; and you may be sure whatever is the nature of the secret, my daughter will keep it inviolate, unless it is Ruth's own wish that it should be told to others."
 
"Thankee, Mr. Armstrong, thankee kindly; I feel more hopeful now. I have been worrying and fretting over this for months, till I can scarce look after my work, and often catch myself going on drawing at my pipe when it's gone out and got cold. But I think it's coming on; I think that crying last night meant something, one way or the other. Well, we shall see; we shall see. I will be off back again to my work now; I feel all the better for having had this talk with you. Hesba's a good woman, and she is fond of the child; but she is what she calls practical—she looks at things hard, and straight, and sensible, and naturally she don't quite enter into my feelings about Ruth, though she is fond of her too. Well, good morning, Mr. Armstrong; you have done me good, and I do hope it will turn out as you say, and that we shall get to know what is Ruth's trouble."
 
An hour later, Mary Armstrong went down to the mill to inquire after Ruth. She found her quiet and pale.
 
"I am glad you have come in, Miss Armstrong," Hesba said, "our Ruth wants cheering up a bit. She had a faint yesterday when she got back from your place, and she is never fit for anything after that except just to sit in her chair and look in the fire. I tell her she would be better if she would rouse herself."
 
"But one cannot always rouse oneself, Mrs. Powlett," Mary said; "and I am sure Ruth does not look equal to talking now. However, she shall sit still, and I will tell her a story. I have never told you yet that I was once carried off by the Kaffirs, and that worse than death would have befallen me, and that I should have been afterwards tortured and killed, if I had not been rescued by a brave man."
 
"Lawk-a-mussy, Miss Armstrong, why you make my flesh creep at the thought of such a thing? And you say it all happened to you? Why, now, to look at you, I should have thought you could hardly have known what trouble meant, you always seem so bright and happy; that's what Ruth has said, again and again."
 
"You shall judge for yourself, Mrs. Powlett, if you can find time to sit down and listen, as well as Ruth."
 
"I can find time for that," Hesba said, "though it isn't often as I sits down till the tea is cleared away and Hiram has lit his pipe."
 
Mary sat down facing the fire, with Ruth in an arm-chair on one side of her, and Mrs. Powlett stiff and upright on a hard settle on the other. Then she began to tell the story, first saying a few words to let her hearers know of the fate of women who fell into the hands of the Kaffirs. Then she began with the story of her journey down from King Williamstown, the sudden attack by natives, and how after seeing her father fall she was carried off. Then she told, what she had never told before, of the hideous tortures of the other two women, part of which she was compelled to witness, and how she was told that she was to be preserved as a present to Macomo. Then she described the dreary journey. "I had only one hope," she said, "and it was so faint that it could not be called a hope; but there was one man in the colony who somehow I felt sure would, if he knew of my danger, try to rescue me. He had once before come to our aid when our house was attacked by Kaffirs, and in a few minutes our fate would have been sealed had he not arrived. But for aught I knew he was a hundred miles away, and what could he do against the three hundred natives who were with me? Still, I had a little ray of hope, the faintest, tiniest ray, until we entered the Amatolas——they are strong steep hills covered with forest and bush, and are the stronghold of the Kaffirs, and I knew that there were about twenty thousand natives gathered there. Then I hoped no longer. I felt that my fate was sealed, and my only wish and my only longing was to obtain a knife or a spear, and to kill myself."
 
Then Mary described the journey through the forest to the kraal, the long hours she had sat waiting for her fate with every movement watched by the Kaffir women, and her sensations when she heard the message in English. Then she described her rescue from the kraal, her flight through the woods, her concealment in the cave, her escape from the Amatolas, the ride with the trooper holding her on his saddle, and the final dash through the Kaffirs.
 
Her hearers had thrown in many interjections of horror and pity, loud on the part of Hesba, mere murmurs on that of Ruth, who had taken Mary's hand in hers, but the sympathetic pressure told more than words.
 
"And you shot four of them, Miss Armstrong!" Hesba ejaculated, in wide-eyed astonishment. "To think that a young girl like you should have the death of four men on her hands! I don't say as it's unchristian, because Christians are not forbidden to fight for their lives, but it does seem downright awful!"
 
"It has never troubled me for a single moment," Mary said. "They tried to kill me, and I killed them. That is the light I saw it in, and so would you if you had been living in the colony."
 
"But you have not finished your story," Ruth said, earnestly. "Surely that is not the end of it!"
 
"No; my father recovered from his wound, and so did the soldier who saved me, and as soon as my father was able to travel, he and I went down to the coast and came home."
 
"That cannot be all," Ruth whispered; "there must be something more to tell, Mary."
 
"I will tell you another time, Ruth," Mary said, in equally low tones, and then rising, put on her hat again, said good-bye, and went out.
 
"Did you ever, Ruth?" Hesba Powlett exclaimed as the door closed. "I never did hear such a story in all my life. And to think of her shooting four men! It quite made my flesh creep; didn't it yours?"
 
"There were other parts of the story that made my flesh creep a great deal more, mother."
 
"Yes, it was terrible! And she didn't say a single word in praise of what the soldier had done for her. Now that seems to me downright ungrateful, and not at all what I should have thought of Miss Armstrong."
 
"I suppose she thought, mother, that there was no occasion to express her opinion of his bravery or to mention her gratitude. The whole story seemed to me a cry of praise and a hymn of gratitude."
 
"Lord, Ruth, what fancies you do take in your head, to be sure! I never did hear such expressions!"
 
Two days passed without Ruth going up to the Armstrongs'; on the third day Mary again went down.
 
"Well, Ruth, as you have not been to see me, I have come to see you again."
 
"I was coming up this afternoon. If you don't mind, I will go back with you now, instead of your staying here. We are quieter there, you know. Somehow, one cannot think or talk when people come in and out of the room every two or three minutes."
 
"I quite agree with you, Ruth, and, if you don't mind my saying so, I would very much rather have you all to myself."
 
The two girls accordingly went back to the cottage. Mary, who was rather an industrious needlewoman, brought out a basket of work. Ruth, who for a long time had scarcely taken up a needle, sat with her hands before her.
 
When two people intend to have a serious conversation with each other, they generally steer wide of the subject at first, and the present was no exception.
 
"I think it would be better for you, Ruth, to occupy yourself with work a little, as I do."
 
"I used to be fond of work," Ruth replied, "but I don't seem to be able to give my attention to it now. I begin, and before I have done twenty stitches, somehow or other my thoughts seem to go away, and by the end of the morning the first twenty stitches are all I have done."
 
"But you oughtn't to think so much, Ruth. It is bad for any one to be always thinking."
 
"Yes, but I can't help it. I have so much to think about, and it gets worse instead of better. Now, after what you said to me the other night, I don't know what to do. It seemed right before. I did not think I was doing much harm in keeping silence; now I see I have been, oh, so wrong!" and she twined her fingers in and out as if suffering bodily pain.
 
"My poor Ruth!" Mary said, coming over to her and kneeling down by her side. "I think I know what is troubling you."
 
The girl shook her head.
 
"Yes, dear, I am almost sure you have known something all along that would have proved Captain Mervyn was innocent, and you have not said it."
 
Ruth Powlett did not speak for a minute or two, then she said, slowly:
 
"I do not know how you have guessed it, Mary. No one else even seems to have thought of it. But, yes, that is it, and I do so want some one to advise me what to do. I see now I have been very wicked. For a long time I have been fighting against myself. I have tried so hard to persuade myself that I had not done much harm, because Captain Mervyn was acquitted. I have really known that I was wrong, but I never thought how wrong until you spoke to me."
 
"Wait, Ruth," Mary said; "before you tell me your secret I must tell you mine. It would not be fair for you to tell me without knowing that. You remember the story I was telling you about my being carried off?"
 
A fresh interest came into Ruth's face.
 
"Yes," she said, "and you promised you would tell me the rest another time. I thought you meant, of course, you would tell me that when this war out there is over, you would some day marry the soldier who has done so much for you."
 
"I was going to tell you, Ruth, why I am not going to marry him."
 
"Oh, I thought you would be sure to," Ruth said in a tone of deep disappointment. "It seemed to me that it was sure to be so. I thought a man would never have risked so much for a woman unless he loved her."
 
"He did love me, Ruth, and I loved him. I don't think I made any secret of it. Somehow it seemed to me that he had a right to me, and I was surprised when the time went on and he didn't ask me. When the last day came before he was to march away to fight again, I think that if he had not spoken I should have done so. Do not think me unmaidenly, Ruth, but he was only a sergeant and I was a rich girl, for my father is a great deal better off than he seems to be, and I thought that perhaps some foolish sort of pride held him back, for I was quite sure that he loved me. But he spoke first. He told me that he loved me, but could never ask me to be his wife; that he could never marry, but he must go through the world alone to the end of his life."
 
"Oh, Mary, how terrible!" Ruth said, pitifully, "how terrible! Was he married before, then?"
 
"No, Ruth, it was worse than that; there was a great shadow over his life; he had been tried for murder, and though he had been acquitted, the stigma was still upon him. Go where he would he might be recognised and pointed out as a murderer; therefore, unless the truth was some day known and his name cleared, no woman could ever be his wife."
 
Ruth had given a little gasp as Mary Armstrong began, then she sat rigid and immovable.
 
"It was Captain Mervyn," she said, at last, in a low whisper.
 
"Yes, Ruth. Sergeant Blunt was Captain Mervyn; he had changed his name, and gone out there to hide himself, but even there he had already been recognised; and, as he said—for I pleaded hard, Ruth, to be allowed to share his exile—go where he would, bury himself in what out-of-the-way corner he might, sooner or later some one would know him, and this story would rise up against him, and, much as he loved me—all the more, perhaps, because he loved me so much—he would never suffer me to be pointed at as the wife of a murderer."
 
"You shall not be," Ruth said, more firmly th............