At length he leaned over and gazed into the tear-stained features, “Lena, my darling,” he said, “do not grieve so.”
There was a strange pleading in his manly voice. “It breaks my heart to see your distress. After all, it may be, it must be, some mistake. We shall yet find Roy Thursby and find him alive and well.”
“It is kind of you to say so, Frank,” said the girl in a mournfully sweet voice, “but there is no hope, can be no hope, for poor Roy.”
“But, my dear Lena,” began Frank, then glancing behind him, “I heard something moving,” he added, partly to himself.
It was Kasba. Attracted by the sight of Lena’s grief she had drawn quite close. Crouched down among the rocks she had heard, and the poor girl’s despair made Kasba’s warm, affectionate heart ache. The sorrow she herself had suffered, was still suffering, made her tenderly solicitous for another’s misery. She stood with hands tightly clenched, battling with her own desires. She dreaded to speak, to tell Lena that her lover lived, for she well knew what the result would be. Yet she longed to comfort her.
The conflict raged fiercely. The issue at stake was all heaven and earth to her, for without Roy life would be blank indeed. Then why should she give him up? Then she remembered Roy’s misery, that in his heart he was pining for the companionship of his own kind, and the inborn truth, the native generosity and candor, that always overruled every other element in her, conquered now. Girding herself to make a great sacrifice, she stepped into the open.
“Bekothrie nithee!” she cried in a tremulous voice.
Mr. McLeod turned sharply. Lena sprang to her feet expectant of she knew not what.
Then, nerving herself, Kasba spoke the words which would make her forever desolate: “Mr. Thursby is alive,” she said.
With a cry of joy Lena ran swiftly to the brave girl.