The gray-haired woman shook her head.

No, dearie, it's a little boy--or he was a little boy forty years ago."

"Forty years--so long! How could you have lived forty years--without him?"

Again the little woman shook her head.

"One has to--sometimes, dearie, but this little boy wasn't mine.

"But you care. You understand. I've seen you here so often before."

"Yes. You see, there's no one else to care. But there was once, and I'm caring now, for her sake."

"For her?"

"His mother."

"Oh-h!" It was a tender little cry, full of quick sympathy. The eyes of the Lady in Black were on the stone marked "Kathleen."

"It ain't as if I didn't know how she'd feel," said the gray-haired woman. "You see, I was nurse to the boy when it happened, and for years afterward I worked in the family. So I know. I saw the whole thing from the beginning, from the very day when the little boy here met with the accident."

"Accident!" It was a cry of concern and sympathy from Kathleen's mother.

"Yes. It was a runaway and he didn't live two days."

"I know! I know!" choked the Lady in Black. Yet she was not thinking of the boy and the runaway horse accident.

"Things stopped then for my mistress," continued the little gray-haired woman, "and that was the beginning of the end. She had a husband and a daughter, but they didn’t seem to be important--not either of 'em. Nothin' seemed important except this little grave out here. She came and spent hours over it, bringin’ flowers and talkin' to it."