The doctor returned with lugubrious visage. But Kitty's was radiant.
She was seized with a thought or an inspiration, and she whispered:
"I will take all the blame upon myself; he cannot more than kill me. It is a good time—he has left orders to be let alone. The priest can come and go before he knows it," and she darted out without another word.
The doctor and Mrs. Moffat looked smilingly across at each other in the faint lamp-light, but neither made a movement for Kitty's detention. As the faithful girl had said, "the priest came and went" before the master knew anything about it. And Althea, having passed through her earthly purgatory, and now hovering, as she thought, upon the borders of death, had been baptized by water into newness of life, and been strengthened by that heavenly food, which is more and diviner than the bread of angels.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.
Althea was very weak, but continued slowly to recover. Several days elapsed, during which time Thornton's pain in the head had been upon the increase, and other alarming symptoms had been developed. These were intensely strengthened by the imprudence of a meddlesome neighbor.
Curtis Coe was Windsor's merchant tailor. He may have been more than the ninth part of a man in some respects; but when, under pretence of a friendly call, he informed Thornton Rush, already very sick, that the priest, Father Ryan, had baptized Althea—we say, when he did this intentionally and with malice aforethought, and with a sinful love of tale-bearing, and with utter recklessness as to consequences, he proved himself infinitely less, even than ordinary tailors of the proverbial size. He deserved the punishment of being hissed by his own goose.