iling on the big ocean, in trousers and a little cap," and
the softer phrases she evidently felt better suited to Mrs. Ocumpaugh's
deep distress: "Don't feel bad, mamma, you shall come see me some time.
Papa will send for you. I am going to him." Then silence, then such a
struggle of woman-heart with woman-heart as I hope never to be witness
to again. Mrs. Ocumpaugh was pleading with Mrs. Carew, not for the
child, but for her life. Mr. Ocumpaugh would be in port the next
morning; if she could show him the child all would be well. Mr. Trevitt
would manage the details; take the credit of having found Gwendolen
somewhere in this great city, and that would insure him the reward and
them his silence. (I heard this.) There was no one else to fear. Doctor
Pool, the cause of all this misery, was dead; and in the future, her
heart being set to rest about her secret, she would be happier and make
the child happier, and they could enjoy her between them, and she would
be unselfish and let Gwendolen spend an hour or more every day with Mrs.
Carew, on some such plea as lessons in vocal-training and music.

Thus pleaded Mrs. Ocumpaugh.

But the mother hardly listened. She had eaten with the child, slept with
the child and almost breathed with the child for three days now, and the
ecstasy of the experience had blinded her to any other claim than her
own. She pitied Mrs. Ocumpaugh, pitied most of all her deceived husband,
but no grief of theirs could equal that of Rachel crying for her child.
Let Mrs. Ocumpaugh remember that when the evil days come. She had
separated child from mother! child from mother! Oh, how the wail swept
through those two rooms!

I dared not prophesy to myself at this point how this would end. I
simply waited.

Their voices had sunk after each passionate outbreak, and I was only
able to catch now and then a word which told me that the struggle was
yet going on.

But finally there came a lull, and while I wondered, the door flew
suddenly open and I saw Mrs. Ocumpaugh standing on the threshold, pallid
and stricken, looking back at the picture made by the other two as Mrs.
Carew, fallen on her knees by the bedside, held to her breast the
panting child.

"I can not go against nature," said she. "Keep Gwendolen, and may God
have pity upon me and Philo."

I stepped forward. Meeting my eye, she faltered this last word:

"Your advice was good. To-morrow when I meet my husband I will tell him
who found the child