dness
is to be shown. Some poor little outcast, no doubt, with no one to take
care of it, and so this grand woman brings it home to nurse and
educate. I wish there were more Jane Cobdens in my parish. Many of you
talk good deeds, and justice, and Christian spirit; here is a woman who
puts them into practice."

This statement having been made during the dispersal of a Wednesday
night meeting, and in the hearing of half the congregation, furnished
the key to the mystery, and so for a time the child and its new-found
mother ceased to be an active subject of discussion.

Ann Gossaway, however, was not satisfied. The more she thought of the
pastor's explanation the more she resented it as an affront to her
intelligence.

"If folks wants to pick up stray babies," she shouted to her old mother
on her return home one night, "and bring 'em home to nuss, they oughter
label 'em with some sort o' pedigree, and not keep the village
a-guessin' as to who they is and where they come from. I don't believe
a word of this outcast yarn. Guess Miss Lucy is all right, and she
knows enough to stay away when all this tomfoolery's goin' on. She
doesn't want to come back to a child's nussery." To all of which her
mother nodded her head, keeping it going like a toy mandarin long after
the subject of discussion had been changed.

Little by little the scandal spread: by innuendoes; by the wise
shakings of empty heads; by nods and winks; by the piecing out of
incomplete tattle. For the spread of gossip is like the spread of fire:
First a smouldering heat--some friction of ill-feeling, perhaps, over a
secret sin that cannot be smothered, try as we may; next a hot,
blistering tongue of flame creeping stealthily; then a burst of
scorching candor and the roar that ends in ruin. Sometimes the victim
is saved by a dash of honest water--the outspoken word of some brave
friend. More often those who should stamp out the burning brand stand
idly by until the final collapse and then warm themselves at the blaze.

Here in Warehold it began with some whispered talk: Bart Holt had
disappeared; there was a woman in the case somewhere; Bart's exile had
not been entirely caused by his love of cards and drink. Reference was
also made to the fact that Jane had gone abroad but a short time AFTER
Bart's disappearance, and that knowing how fond she was of him, and how
she had tried to reform him, the probability was that she had met him
in Paris. Doubts having been