"She's a gal."
Vaguely, understanding began to drift in to Kate. Her voice shook suddenly as she said, "What do you mean about the Night Riders getting your father? He is in no danger from them with you not there. It was you they threatened."
"No'm, 't were Pappy. That's how he come to run away. They got down on him fer makin' me do like I done."
"Making you—?" gasped Kate Kildare.
"Yes'm! It were him what found the men and brought 'em round. But it wa'n't no business of them Night Riders," said the girl resentfully. "I didn't mind. It were a easy way of makin' money, easier 'n workin'. Pappy's so po'ly, he ain't got the strength to work hisself. Only—" she began to cry again—"I know it ain't nice, and I don't want my baby should do that-a-way, not ever. I want she should grow up a lady, like you."
Kate was shivering uncontrollably. Over the brooding Sabbath stillness of her fields it seemed to her that a strange miasma was creeping, which shadowed the light of the sun. She had read of such horrors as this. She had thought of that strange traffic, the White Slave trade, as of some hideous, modern depravity that belonged to another and harsher world than her own. Yet here, almost within sight of the home that sheltered her children, here in the domain where her will was law, where she had believed herself cognizant of the doings of every man and woman and child—the thing had been going on unknown to her; the sacrifice of a little girl creature, not in the name of love (her tolerant mind found it difficult to condemn the sinning of stupid, healthy young human animals) but in the name of filial piety.—"Filial piety!" Always afterward the smug phrase was hideous to her.
"Well," said Philip, rather hoarsely, "what are we to do with this—this man?"
"Let the Night Riders have him, and welcome!"
But Mag intervened once more in her father's behalf. "No, no, they'd kill him, shore! He's so sickly. Don't you let 'em git him, Miss Kate, don't you! He's always been real kind to me, even when he's drunk. Don't you let 'em git him!"
"Do you love him, Mag?" asked Kate, wonderingly.