Page:That Lass o' Lowrie's.djvu/28

19 hands, and there was a dogged sort of misery expressed in her very posture.

"A woman," he said aloud. "What woman, I wonder. This is not the time for any woman to be sitting here alone." He crossed the road at once, and going to the girl, touched her lightly on the shoulder.

"My lass," he said good-naturedly, "what ails you?" She raised her head slowly as if she were dizzy and bewildered. Her face was disfigured by a bruise, and on one temple was a cut from which the blood trickled down her cheek; but the moonlight showed him that it was Joan. He removed his hand from her shoulder and drew back a pace.

"You have been hurt!" he exclaimed.

"Aye," she answered deliberately, "I've had a hurt—a bad un."

He did not ask her how she had been hurt. He knew as well as if she had told him, that it had been done in one of her father's fits of drunken passion. He had seen this sort of thing before during his sojourn in the mining districts. But, shamefully repulsive as it had been to him, he had never felt the degradation of it as fiercely as he did now.

"You are Joan Lowrie?" he said.

"Aye, I'm Joan Lowrie, if it'll do yo' ony good to know."

"You must have something done to that cut upon your temple."

She put up her hand and wiped the blood away, as if impatient at his persistence.

"It'll do well enow as it is," she said.

"That is a mistake," he answered. "You are losing