Page:She's all the world to me. A novel (IA shesallworldtome00cain 0).pdf/155

 glowed red through the darkness. Danny's Contrary fire, which had smoldered all day, showed brightly again.

"Oh, how glad I am that all is over," repeated the girl, creeping closer beneath Christian's arm. "You said to-night to your father that a secret sin is a corroding thing. How truly I've felt it so when I've thought of my own poor father. You never knew him. He died before you came to us. He was a good, simple man, and loved us, though perhaps he left us poorer than we might have been, and more troubled than we were in the old days at Glen Rushen."

"No, I never knew him; but the thought of him has stung me to the quick when I've seen his daughter working for daily bread. It has been then that I've felt myself the meanest of men."

"Christian," continued Mona, regardless of the interruption, "have you ever thought that the dead are links that connect us with the living?"

"How?"

"Well, in this way. From our kin in heaven we can have no secrets; and when the living kin guess our hidden thought, our secret act, perhaps it has been our dead kin who have whispered of it."

"That is a strange fancy, Mona, an awful fancy. Few of us would dare to have secrets if we accepted it."

They were approaching the cottage, and could hear a merry child's voice singing. "Listen," said Mona, and they stopped. Then the girl's head dropped. Tears were again in her eyes.

"She's been sorrow as well as happiness to you, my