"Kittie, haven't you any idea who that man was?"
She looked shocked at the question. "Of course not!" Then the seriousness of his tone struck her and she began to tremble.
"What do you mean?"
"It was Mr. Fullerton,--I am sure it must have been. But you must come and show me the spot. You know that Mr. Lawrence is in jail under suspicion of having killed him."
"Yes." Then, suddenly, she understood. She went very white and her eyes grew large with horror. He feared she would faint, but Kittie was not of the fainting sort. Instead she began talking volubly, in intense nervous excitement.
"I don't care, he hadn't any business to jump out of the shadows in that way. He just did it to frighten me, and it made my heart beat so terribly that I didn't know what I was doing. I just struck at him and I didn't think about the skates, and if Miss Elliott hears about it she will simply be hysterical. I'll have to tell her how I got out and that will be breaking my initiation oath and there will simply be nothing terrible enough for her to say. And--" she stopped suddenly as a new horror struck her, and gasped. "Will they put me in jail?"
"I think probably not, but we'll have to see Mr. Howell, the lawyer, and let him arrange in regard to all that."
His hesitancy was more terrible than anything she had expected. It struck her dumb.
"You never suspected, when you saw the report in the paper the next day, that the man found dead on Sherman Street was the man you had met?"
"I never saw the papers," said Kittie. "Miss Elliott doesn't allow them to come into the school. And besides I went away early Tuesday morning, you know, and didn't come back till Saturday. I never heard a thing about it."