must be comforted to know I am dying in
peace, because I trust in your last promise--"

Then a blot, some unintelligible marks, and a space. Lower still,
scarcely legible characters were scrawled:

"Tell my darling--to wear my ring as a holy--"

In death as in life, the last word, and the deepest feeling were not
for her; the sacred souvenir was left for the hand that had so often
stabbed the idolatrous heart, now stilled forever.

In all ages the ninety and nine that go not astray, never feel the
caressing touch which the yearning Shepherd lays on the obstinate
wanderer, who would not pasture in peace; and from the immemorial dawn
of inchoate civilization, prodigals have possessed the open sesame to
parental hearts that seemed barred against the more dutiful. By what
perverted organon of ethics has it come to pass in sociology, that the
badge of favoritism is rarely the guerdon of merit?

To the orphaned, forsaken, disgraced captive, sitting amid the sombre
ruins of her life, drinking the bitter lees of the fatal cup a mother's
hand had forced to her reluctant lips, there seemed nothing strange in
the injustice meted out; for had not the second place in maternal love
always been hers? As the great gray eyes darkening behind their tears,
like deep lakes under coming rain, read and re-read the blurred lines,
the frozen mouth trembled, and Beryl kissed the hair, folded it away in
the letter, and pinned both close to her heart. Staggering to her feet,
she held up the ring, and said in a broken, half audible voice:

"When I am dead, your darling shall have it; until then lend it to your
little girl, as a strengthening amulet. The sight of it will hold me
firm, will girdle my soul with fortitude, as it girdles my finger; will
set a yet holier seal to the compact whereby I pledged my life, that
you might die in peace. If, in the last hour, you had known all my
peril, all that my promise entails, would you have released me? Would
you have died content knowing that your idol was guarded and safe,
behind the cold shield of your little girl's polluted body? The blood
in my veins flowed from yours; I slept on your heart, I was the last
baby whose lips fed at your bosom. Mother! Mother, if you had known
all, could you have seen the load of guilt and shame and woe laid on
your innocent child, and bought the life of your first-born, by the
sacrifice of a scapegoat? Dear mother, my mother, would you shelter
him, and leave your b