Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/389

 lendore confessed. Anyhow, I've got other proof— the original owner of the gun who left it at your house when he was a kid. Feller—come out."

"Disston!" Toomey gasped as Hugh stepped from the semidusk of the corridor into the light. The thing he had feared most since some ugly perversity of his nature had kept him silent because of his dislike of Mormon Joe and Kate had come to pass.

In the swift movement of events, matters of more interest were transpiring than Toomey's nervous collapse. With a cry that has no counterpart save as it comes straight from a woman's heart, Kate had sprung to her feet and gone to Disston with her hands outstretched.

"Hughie! Hughie! You've come back. Speak— say something so I'll know that I'm awake." The Boosters' Club and its guests did not exist for Kate.

"Katie—Katie Prentice, is this wonderful girl you?" His face was radiant with admiration and amazement as he held her at arms' length.

"For months and months, Hughie," she said softly, "I've wanted to tell you that I was wrong and you were right. There is nothing of any great importance except love. Without it success is empty—empty as a gourd! Tell me, Hughie—tell me quick that it isn't too late to make amends for my mistake!"

Her answer was already in Disston's eyes so his whisper was superfluous—"I told you it was for always, Kate."