housekeeper, has both those two tickets for hell? Do you
remember the others that make up that horrible company in the last
chapter of Revelation? Mrs. Adams, _the girl is_ DEAD!"

The Deacon's wife's hard face had blazed instantly into passionate
scarlet. But I cared not for her, nor for man nor woman. For the words
_said themselves_, and thrilled and sounded fearful to me also; they
hurt me; they burnt from my tongue as melted iron might; and, scarcely
knowing it, I rose up and emphasized with my forefinger. And her face,
at those last four words, turned stony and whity-gray, like a corpse. I
thought she would die. Oh, it was awful to think so, and to feel that
she deserved it! For I did. I do now. For, reason as I will, I cannot
help feeling as if a tinge of the poor helpless child's blood was upon
my own garments. I do well to be angry. It is not that I desire any
personal revenge. But I have a feeling,--not pleasure, it is almost all
pity and pain,--but yet a feeling that sudden death or lingering death
would be small satisfaction of justice upon her for what she rendered to
another.

Her strong, hard, cruel nature fought tigerishly up again from the
horrible blow of my news. She was frightened almost to swooning at the
thing that I told and my denunciation, and the deep answering stab of
her own conscience. But her angry iron will rallied with an effort which
must have been an agony; her face became human again, and, looking
straight and defiantly at me, she said, yet with difficulty,

"Ah! I'll see if my husband'll hev sech things said to me! That's all!"

And she turned and went straightway out of my house, erect and steady as
ever.

It may seem a trifling story, and its lesson a trifling one. But it is
not so,--neither trifling nor needless.

It is a rare thing, indeed, for a woman in this America to long and love
to have children. The only two women whom I know in this large town who
do are Mrs. O'Reilly, the mother of poor Bridget, and--one more.

Poor old Mrs. O'Reilly! She came to me this morning, and sat in my
kitchen, and cried so bitterly, and talked in her strong Corkonian
brogue, and rocked herself backwards and forwards, and shook abroad the
great lambent banners of her cap-border,--a grotesque old woman, but
sacred in her tender motherhood and her great grief. Her first coming
was to peddle blackberries in the summer. I asked her if she picked them
herself.

"Och thin and shure I've the chi