ank God
I've given that ruffian what'll send him to hell before I get there! And
you--_you_"--and here he made a frantic grab for the revolver that lay
upon the floor, but Gleason kicked it away--"you, young hound, I meant
to have wound you up before I got through. But I can jeer at
you--God-forsaken idiot--I can triumph over you;" and he stretched forth
a quivering, menacing arm and hand. "You _would_ have your way--damn
you!--so take it. You've given your love to a bastard,--that's what Zoe
is."

Baker stood like one turned suddenly into stone. But from the other end
of the room came prompt, wrathful, and with the ring of truth in her
earnest protest, the mother's loud defence of her child.

"It's a lie,--a fiendish and malignant lie,--and he knows it. Here lies
her father, my own husband, murdered by that scoundrel there. Her
baptismal certificate is in my room. I've kept it all these years where
he never could get it. No, Frank, she's your own, your own baby, whom
you never saw. Go--go and bring her. He _must_ see his baby-girl. Oh,
my darling, don't--don't go until you see her." And again she covered
the ashen face with her kisses. I knelt and put the flask to his lips
and he eagerly swallowed a few drops. Baker had turned and darted
up-stairs. "Burnham's" late effort had proved too much for him. He had
fainted away, and the blood was welling afresh from several wounds.

A moment more and Baker reappeared, leading his betrothed. With her
long, golden hair rippling down her back, her face white as death, and
her eyes wild with dread, she was yet one of the loveliest pictures I
ever dreamed of. Obedient to her mother's signal, she knelt close beside
them, saying no word.

"Zoe, darling, this is your own father; the one I told you of last
winter."

Old Potts seemed struggling to rise; an inexpressible tenderness shone
over his rugged, bearded face; his eyes fastened themselves on the
lovely girl before him with a look almost as of wonderment; his lips
seemed striving to whisper her name. His wife raised him still higher,
and Baker reverently knelt and supported the shoulder of the dying man.
There was the silence of the grave in the dimly-lighted room. Slowly,
tremulously the arm in the old blue blouse was raised and extended
towards the kneeling girl. Lowly she bent, clasping her hands and with
the tears now welling from her eyes. One moment more and the withered
old hand that for quarter of a century had grasp