sitting here in the dark, someone came to the window, stove it in—look how the lead is torn, and the glass fallen out—and cast at the feet of Mehalah a medal she had given George on Thursday. She thinks," added the old woman in a subdued tone, "that what she saw was his spirit."
Mrs. De Witt was awed. She was not a woman without superstition, but she was not one to allow a supernatural intervention till all possible prosaic explanations had been exhausted.
"Is this Gospel truth?" she asked.
"It is true," answered the widow.
"Did you see the face, Glory? Are you sure that what you saw was George?"
"I did not see the face. I saw only the figure. But it was George. It could have been no other. He alone had the medal, and he brought it back to me."
"You see," explained the widow Sharland, "the coin was an heirloom; it might not go out of the family."
"I see it all," exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. "Galiwanting again! He came to return the keepsake to Mehalah, because he wanted to break with her and take on with another."
"No, never!" exclaimed Mehalah vehemently. "He could not do it. He was as true to me as I am to him. . He could not do it. He came to tell me that all was over."
"Dear sackalive!" said Mrs. De Witt, "you don't know men as I do. You have had no more experience of them than you have of kangaroos. I will not believe he is dead."
"He is dead," Mehalah burst forth with fierce vehemence. "He is drowned, he is not false. He is dead, he is dead."
"I know better," said Mrs. De Witt in a low tone to herself as she bit her thumb. "That boy is galiwanting somewhere; the only question to me is Where. By cock I I'd give a penny to know."
CHAPTER IX
IN MOURNING
A month passed, and no tidings whatever of George De Witt had reached his mother or Mehalah. The former constantly expected news of her son. She would not believe in his death, and was encouraged in her opinion by
