ch a fine baby, too," he said,
hesitating--the old woman mistakenly fancied it was her words
that made him pause. "I feel no good at all," he went on, as if
reasoning with himself, "no good at all, losing both the mother
and the child."

"_She_ didn't want to live," replied Nora. Her glances stole
somewhat fearfully toward the door of the adjoining room--the
bedroom where the mother lay dead.

"There wasn't nothing but disgrace ahead for both of them.
Everybody'll be glad."

"Such a fine baby," muttered the abstracted young doctor.

"Love-children always is," said Nora. She was looking sadly and
tenderly down at the tiny, symmetrical form--symmetrical to her
and the doctor's expert eyes. "Such a deep chest," she sighed.
"Such pretty hands and feet. A real love-child." There she
glanced nervously at the doctor; it was meet and proper and
pious to speak well of the dead, but she felt she might be going
rather far for a "good woman."

"I'll try it," cried the young man in a resolute tone. "It can't
do any harm, and----"

Without finishing his sentence he laid hold of the body by the
ankles, swung it clear of the table. As Nora saw it dangling
head downwards like a dressed suckling pig on a butcher's hook
she vented a scream and darted round the table to stop by main
force this revolting desecration of the dead. Stevens called out
sternly: "Mind your business, Nora! Push the table against the
wall and get out of the way. I want all the room there is."

"Oh, Doctor--for the blessed Jesus' sake----"

"Push back that table!"

Nora shrank before his fierce eyes. She thought his exertions,
his disappointment and the heat had combined to topple him over
into insanity. She retreated toward the farther of the open
windows. With a curse at her stupidity Stevens kicked over the
table, used his foot vigorously in thrusting it to the wall.
"Now!" exclaimed he, taking his stand in the center of the room
and gauging the distance of ceiling, floor and walls.

Nora, her back against the window frame, her fingers sunk in her
big loose bosom, stared petrified. Stevens, like an athlete
swinging an indian club, whirled the body round and round his
head, at the full length of his powerful arms. More and more
rapidly he swung it, until his breath came and went in gasps and
the sweat was trickling in streams down his face and neck. Round
and round between ceiling and floor whirled the naked body of
the baby--round