OWING to various causes, some time elapsed before Peter Marshall was able to avail himself of Matthew Reardon's permission to call and see the children. It was not that he resented, or even remembered its ungraciousness, but because he really had had no time.
The old man was a busy worker in the crowded wilderness of human life, where the harvest is so great and the labourers—alas! that it should be so—but few; and where he had worked all the harder of late, from a presentiment he had that the night, or rather the dawn, was at hand.
Matthew had not been to the office for several days, and the kind-hearted old man remembered how ill he had thought him looking the last time he was there, and determined to go and see what had become of him.
"That poor girl, too," thought he, "I should like to meet her again. Who knows but what the Lord may be pleased to give me a word for her."
It was a strange fact—and yet not strange either, for the same thing is constantly happening, if the children of God would only observe and ponder it in their hearts more frequently than they do—that no sooner had Marshall turned into the street in which the Reardons lived, than he saw Kate Donaldson standing at the door. He knew her at once by her shawl—the same thin gay-coloured shawl. But he could not have distinguished it if she had not been standing immediately under a gas-lamp, the night being foggy, while a cold drizzling rain fell fast and drearily.
The girl started when he spoke.
"Isn't it late for you to be abroad, my child?"
"Not later than usual," was the careless reply.
"But that should not be."
"Are you going to see your friend?" asked Kate. "You'll find him at home to-night safe enough. He won't be out again in a hurry."