daily food and drink; he had
no purpose save the degrading purpose of defeating the nightly
wanderings of his drunken wife. Thus without any human eye upon him
in the dark way he was going, Stephen Orry had grown coarse and base.

But the end was not yet, of all this than was to be and know. One
night, after spending the day on the sea with the lines for cod, the
year deepening to winter, the air muggy and cold, he went away home,
hungry, and wet and cold, leaving his mates at the door of the
"Plough," where there was good company within and the cheer of a busy
fire! Home! On reaching Port-y-Vullin he found the door open, the
hearth cold, the floor in a puddle from the driving rain, not a bite
or sup in the cupboard, and his wife lying drunk across the bed, with
the child in its grimy blueness creeping and crying about her head.

It was the beginning of the end. Once again he fumbled the haft of
his seaman's knife, and then by a quick impulse he plucked up the
child in his arms.

"Now God be praised for your poor face," he said, and while he dried
the child's pitiful eyes, the hot drops started to his own.

He lit the fire, he cooked a cod he had brought home with him, he ate
himself and fed the little one. Then he sat before the hearth with
the child at his breast, as any mother might do, for at length it had
come to him to know that, if it was not to be lost and worse than
orphaned, he must henceforth be father and mother both to it.

And when the little eyes, wet no longer, but laughing like sunshine
into the big seared face above them struggled in vain with sleep, he
wrapped the child in his ragged guernsey and put it to lie like a
bundle where the fire could warm it. Then all being done he sat
again, and leaning his elbows on his knees covered his ears with his
hands, so that they might shut out the sound of the woman's heavy
breathing.

It was on that night, for the first time since he fled from Iceland,
that he saw the full depth of his offence. Offence? Crime it was, and
that of the blackest; and in the terror of his loneliness he trembled
at the thought that some day his horrible dumb secret would become
known, that something would happen to tell it--that he was married
already when he married the woman who lay behind him.

At that he saw how low he had fallen--from her who once had been so
pure and true beside him, and had loved him and given up father, and
home, and fame for him; to this trull, who n