Bill," she said, as she lifted the rough coverlet
sufficiently to show where the little head was nestled on her arm. "He's
come back to me from the other world."

* * * * *

For days Taylor waited, expecting that the man would come back or send
word; but as nothing was seen or heard of him, he took counsel with his
wife and the neighbour.

"Seems queer, that chap not doing anything," he said one evening,
shortly before the neighbour left for her own home. "How will we name
him?" he went on, glancing over at the sleeping infant his wife was
holding in her arms. "He ain't ours really."

"He is ours. He is mine, _mine_," his wife answered quickly, as she held
the baby tighter to her, and looked at her husband with a savage
jealousy in her eyes.

"But there was that chap----" Taylor began.

"I don't care. I won't give him up. He's mine," she interrupted. "No
one's going to have him; no one--never," she continued, as she rose to
her feet and walked up and down the room, with her face bent over the
child she held so closely to her.

The neighbour caught Taylor's eye and signed him to be quiet.

"Of course no one will have him but you," she said quietly. "I'd like to
see who'd take him when Taylor's here. Why, he hasn't been round his
boundary fences even, he's so took up with him."

Mrs. Taylor stopped in her walk, and turned to her husband with the
jealous gleam still flickering in her eyes.

"Would you give him up, Bill?" she asked.

"Not me," he answered.

"Then we'll talk about his name," she interposed, before he could say
more. "He's going to be called Richard Taylor."

"But that chap asked me--he said, 'Call him Tony, after me.' That's what
he said, and I said----"

"I don't care what you said or what he said," she interrupted. "He
should have stayed and looked after him, and not sneaked off in the
dark, if he wanted to name him. Mrs. Garry says so too; don't you, Mrs.
Garry?"

Mrs. Garry, directly appealed to, had to sustain the opinion she had
already expressed in private.

"But I said I would," Taylor asserted. "I said I'd call him Tony."

"Well, call him Tony. Name him as Richard Taylor, and call him Tony for
short," Mrs. Garry suggested.

"Tony!" Mrs. Taylor exclaimed scornfully. "What sort of a name do you
call that? Why, it's only fit for a black-fellow."

"It'll do for short," Taylor said. "We'll name him Richard Taylor, and
call him Tony for short."