d any
mercy at all you'd kiss back, just a little bit."

Freckles' sinewy fist knotted into the coverlet. His chin pointed
ceilingward while his head rocked on the pillow.

"Oh, Jesus!" burst from him in agony. "You ain't the only one that was
crucified!"

The Angel caught Freckles' hand and carried it to her breast.

"Freckles!" she wailed in terror, "Freckles! It is a mistake? Is it that
you don't want me?"

Freckles' head rolled on in wordless suffering.

"Wait a bit, Angel?" he panted at last. "Be giving me a little time!"

The Angel arose with controlled features. She bathed his face,
straightened his hair, and held water to his lips. It seemed a long time
before he reached toward her. Instantly she knelt again, carried his
hand to her breast, and leaned her cheek upon it.

"Tell me, Freckles," she whispered softly.

"If I can," said Freckles in agony. "It's just this. Angels are
from above. Outcasts are from below. You've a sound body and you're
beautifulest of all. You have everything that loving, careful raising
and money can give you. I have so much less than nothing that I don't
suppose I had any right to be born. It's a sure thing--nobody wanted me
afterward, so of course, they didn't before. Some of them should have
been telling you long ago."

"If that's all you have to say, Freckles, I've known that quite a
while," said the Angel stoutly. "Mr. McLean told my father, and he told
me. That only makes me love you more, to pay for all you've missed."

"Then I'm wondering at you," said Freckles in a voice of awe. "Can't you
see that if you were willing and your father would come and offer you
to me, I couldn't be touching the soles of your feet, in love--me, whose
people brawled over me, cut off me hand, and throwed me away to freeze
and to die! Me, who has no name just as much because I've no RIGHT to
any, as because I don't know it. When I was little, I planned to find me
father and mother when I grew up. Now I know me mother deserted me, and
me father was maybe a thief and surely a liar. The pity for me suffering
and the watching over me have gone to your head, dear Angel, and it's me
must be thinking for you. If you could be forgetting me lost hand, where
I was raised, and that I had no name to give you, and if you would be
taking me as I am, some day people such as mine must be, might come upon
you. I used to pray ivery night and morning and many times the day to
see me mother. Now I only pray