From long habit, she went on her knees to think her problem out; and the answer came, as it so often comes to people on their knees—came with a remembered fragrance of sun upon pine-branches, a steady sound among tree-tops of the wind that always blows above the world.
Some hours later Jacqueline took a train for Frankfort; and she passed Storm station at night, on her way to a town in the Kentucky mountains.
So it happened that there came to Philip, in Paris, the letter that told him he had found both his father and his wife.
Jacques Benoix, glancing out of his schoolhouse door at the unwonted sound of wheels in the trail below, had been startled to see a woman descending from a wagon, whom he at first mistook for Kate Kildare herself. She was helped by Bates the peddler, met by good chance in the town below.
"Here comes another worker for the Lord's vineyard!" beamed the peddler, as the school-teacher, recovering his breath, hurried to meet them.
"And a most welcome one! If I were a religious man, I should think you an answer to prayer, so great is our need of help."
"Help? Do you think I can be of any help?" asked Jacqueline, wistfully—a very changed Jacqueline she was, pale and drawn-looking, and with a new little dignity about her which the physician was quick to observe. "I'm not a capable person, you know, like mother and Jemmy. I do know a little about sewing, though, and cooking, and housekeeping, and—and—"
"Singing, I remember," smiled her host, "and making people comfortable, I think? The very things we need most, my dear. It is maddening in a place like this to be limited to one set of brains, and arms, and legs—and those masculine. Ah, but I am glad that you have come!"
"So am I." Jacqueline breathed a grateful sigh. "But—" she swallowed hard, and looked him squarely in the face—"I want you to know that I am hiding away from everybody.—Must I tell you why?"