one it herself.

The kitchen door was very near indeed now. It did not seem to be
Margaret that was moving, but the kitchen door. It seemed to be
coming to meet her and bringing with it a dear slender figure. She
looked up and saw the soberness in its dear eyes.

"This can't be my little girl, can--" but Margaret heard no more.
With a muffled wail she fled past the slender figure, up-stairs, that
she did not see at all, to her own little room. On the bed she lay
and felt her heart break under her awful little checked apron. For
now she knew for certain.

Two darknesses shut down about her, and in the heart-break of one she
forgot to be afraid of the other. She had always before been afraid
of the night-dark and imagined creepy steps coming along the hall and
into the door. The things she imagined now were dreadfuler than that.
This new dark was so much darker!

They thought she was asleep and let her lie there on her little bed
alone. By-and-by would be time enough to probe gently for the
childish trouble. Perhaps she would leave it behind her in her sleep.

Out-of-doors suddenly a new sound rose shrill above the crickets and
the frogs. It was the Enemy singing "Glory, glory, hallelujah." That
was the last straw. Margaret writhed deeper into the pillows. She
knew what the rest of it was--"Glory, glory, hallelujah, 'tisn't me!
_My_ soul goes marching on!" She was out there singing that
a-purpose!

In her desperate need for some one to lay her trouble to, Margaret
"laid it to" the Enemy. A sudden, bitter, unreasoning resentment took
possession of her. If there hadn't been an Enemy, there wouldn't have
been a trouble. Everything would have been beautiful and--and
respectable, just as it was before. _She_ would have been out there
singing "Glory, glory hallelujah," too.

"She's to blame--I hate her!" came muffledly from the pillows. "Oh, I
do!--I can't help it, I do! I'm always going to hate her forevermore!
She needn't have--"

Needn't have what? What had the little scape-goat out there in the
twilight done? But Margaret was beyond reasoning now. "Mine enemy
hath done it," was enough for her. If she lived a thousand years--if
she lived _two_ thousand--she would never speak to the Enemy
again,--never forgive her,--never put her into her prayer again among
the God blesses.

A plan formulated itself after a while in the dark little room. It
was born of the travail of the child's soul. Something must be
done--ther