. She died in anguish--the mother of an
hour-old child."

"My God! My God! My God!"

Three times the cry broke from Baird.

He got up and walked across the room and back.

"Wait--wait a moment!" he exclaimed. "For a moment don't go on."

As the years had passed, more than once he had been haunted by a dread
that some day he might come upon some tragic truth long hidden. Here he
was face to face with it. But what imagination could have painted it like
this?

"You think my lie--a damnable thing," said Latimer.

"No, no!" answered the other man, harshly. "No, no!"

He moved to and fro, and Latimer went on.

"I never understood," he said. "She was a pure creature, and a loving,
innocent one."

"Yes," Baird groaned; "loving and innocent. Go on--go on! It breaks my
heart--it breaks my heart!"

Remembering that he had said "You might have been my brother," Latimer
caught his breath in a groan too. He understood. He had forgotten--
forgotten. But now he must go on.

"At home she had been always a bright, happy, tender thing. She loved us
and we loved her. She was full of delicate gifts. We are poor people; we
denied ourselves that we might send her to Boston to develop her talent.
She went away, radiant and full of innocent gratitude. For some time she
was very happy. I was making every effort to save money to take her
abroad that she might work in the studios there. She had always been a
delicate little creature--and when it seemed that her health began to
fail, we feared the old terrible New England scourge of consumption. It
always took such bright things as she was. When she came home for a visit
her brightness seemed gone. She drooped and could not eat or sleep. We
could not bear to realise it. I thought that if I could take her to
France or Italy she might be saved. I thought of her day and night--day
and night."

He paused, and the great knot in his throat worked convulsively in the
bondage of his shabby collar. He began again when he recovered his voice.

"I thought too much," he said. "I don't know how it was. But just at that
time there was a miserable story going on at the mills--I used to see the
poor girl day by day--and hear the women talk. You know how that class of
woman talks and gives you details and enlarges on them? The girl was
about Margery's age. I don't know how it was; but one day, as I was
standing listening to a gossipping married woman in one of their squalid,
respectable parlours,