colony of squatters had contrived to keep the law at bay, and Charity,
with burning eagerness, awaited young Harney's comment; but the young
man seemed more concerned to hear Mr. Royall's views than to express his
own.

"I suppose you've never been up there yourself?" he presently asked.

"Yes, I have," said Mr. Royall with a contemptuous laugh. "The wiseacres
down here told me I'd be done for before I got back; but nobody lifted a
finger to hurt me. And I'd just had one of their gang sent up for seven
years too."

"You went up after that?"

"Yes, sir: right after it. The fellow came down to Nettleton and ran
amuck, the way they sometimes do. After they've done a wood-cutting
job they come down and blow the money in; and this man ended up with
manslaughter. I got him convicted, though they were scared of the
Mountain even at Nettleton; and then a queer thing happened. The fellow
sent for me to go and see him in gaol. I went, and this is what he says:
'The fool that defended me is a chicken-livered son of a--and all
the rest of it,' he says. 'I've got a job to be done for me up on the
Mountain, and you're the only man I seen in court that looks as if he'd
do it.' He told me he had a child up there--or thought he had--a little
girl; and he wanted her brought down and reared like a Christian. I was
sorry for the fellow, so I went up and got the child." He paused, and
Charity listened with a throbbing heart. "That's the only time I ever
went up the Mountain," he concluded.

There was a moment's silence; then Harney spoke. "And the child--had she
no mother?"

"Oh, yes: there was a mother. But she was glad enough to have her go.
She'd have given her to anybody. They ain't half human up there. I guess
the mother's dead by now, with the life she was leading. Anyhow, I've
never heard of her from that day to this."

"My God, how ghastly," Harney murmured; and Charity, choking with
humiliation, sprang to her feet and ran upstairs. She knew at last: knew
that she was the child of a drunken convict and of a mother who wasn't
"half human," and was glad to have her go; and she had heard this
history of her origin related to the one being in whose eyes she longed
to appear superior to the people about her! She had noticed that Mr.
Royall had not named her, had even avoided any allusion that might
identify her with the child he had brought down from the Mountain; and
she knew it was out of regard for her that he had kept silen