istening to her as she
charged him with indifference, could not have borne much more; but the
mention of her child had a strange power over him, of quieting him at
once, so that he could calmly tell her that she was the same to him that
she had always been, while with his next breath he asked: "Where is your
baby, Katy?" adding with a smile: "I can remember when you were a baby,
and I held you in my arms."

"Can you really?" Katy said; and as if that remembrance made him older
than the hills, she nestled her curly head against his shoulder, while
she told him of her bright-eyed darling, and as she talked the
mother-love which spread itself over her girlish face made it more
beautiful than anything Morris had ever seen.

"Surely an angel's countenance cannot be fairer, purer than hers," he
thought, listening while she talked of the only thing which had a power
to separate her from him, making her seem as a friend, or at most as a
beloved sister.

A long time they talked together, and the sun was setting ere Morris
rose, suggesting that she go home, as the night dew would soon be
falling.

"And you are not as strong as you once were," he added, pulling her
shawl around her shoulders with careful solicitude, and thinking how
slender she had become.

From the back parlor Helen saw them coming up the path, detecting the
changed expression of Morris' face, and feeling a pang of fear when as
he left them after nine o'clock she heard her mother say that he had not
appeared so natural since Katy went away as he had done that night.
Knowing what she did, Helen trembled for Morris, with this terrible
temptation before him, and Morris trembled for himself as he went back
the lonely path, and stopped again beneath the chestnut tree where he
had so lately sat with Katy. There was a great fear at his heart, and it
found utterance in words as kneeling by the rustic bench with only the
lonely night around him and the green boughs overhead, he asked that he
might be kept from sin, both in thought and deed, and be to Katy Cameron
just what she took him for, her friend and elder brother. And God, who
knew the sincerity of the heart thus pleading before him, heard and
answered the prayer, so that after that first night of trial Morris
could look on Katy without a wish that she were otherwise than Wilford
Cameron's wife and the mother of his child. He was happier because of
her being at the farmhouse, though he did not go there one-hal