like her; but if she takes
baby away, I shall surely die."

Katy had come back to the starting point, and in her eye there was the
same fierce look which Helen had at first observed.

"Where is baby to be sent?" Helen asked, and Katy answered:

"Up the river, to a house which Father Cameron owns, and which is kept
by a farmer's family. I can't trust Kirby. I do not like her. She keeps
baby asleep too long, and acts so cross if I try to wake her, or hint
that she looks unnatural. I cannot give baby to her care, with no one to
look after her, though Wilford says I must."

"Why then do you try to resist, when you know how useless it is?" Helen
asked, and something in her manner brought a sudden flush of shame to
Katy's cheek, as she said:

"What do you mean? Of what are you thinking?"

Helen did not stop to consider the propriety of her remarks, but
replied:

"I was thinking that you reminded me of a bird beatings wings against
the bars of its cage, vainly hoping to escape into the freedom which it
feels is outside its prison house, but falling back bruised and bleeding
with its efforts, and no nearer escape."

For a moment Katy regarded her sister intently, while she seemed trying
to digest the meaning of her words; then, as it vaguely flashed upon
her, tears gathered on her eyelashes and rolled down her cheeks, while
with a quivering lip she asked:

"If you were that bird, what would you do?"

"I? What would I do? I should beat my wings until I died; but your
nature is different. You are more yielding, more loving, more
submissive. You can bear it better."

This was not the first time since she came to New York and saw how firm,
how unbending was the will which held Katy in its grasp, that Helen had
thought how surely she, with her high, imperious spirit, should die,
from the very resistance she should offer to that will. But as she had
truly expressed it, Katy's gentle, submissive nature saved her, for
never had she offered so violent opposition to any plan as she did now
to that of sending her child away.

"I can't, I can't," she repeated constantly, and Mrs. Cameron's call,
made that afternoon with a view to reconcile the matter, only made it
worse, so that Wilford, on his return at night, felt a pang of
self-reproach as he saw the drooping figure holding his child upon its
lap and singing it a lullaby in a plaintive voice, which told how sore
was its heart.

Wilford did not mean to be either a savage