him to make shoes."

"Was it your fault? Now that he is free, then," going on steadily, still
patting the child's cheek, "you mean to shake him off,--having used him.
Push him back into the old slough. He can make a decent living there,
cobbling, I know. Be generous, John," with a keen glance of the pale
brown eyes. "If you succeed in this thing to-morrow, take him with us
out of the United States. There is trouble coming here. Give him a
chance for education,--to know something of the world he lives in,--to
catch one or two free breaths before he dies. He has been the man in the
iron cage, since his birth, it seems to me."

She got up as she spoke, rang the bell, and gave the baby to its nurse,
wrapping it up in a blanket or two. When she turned, her husband was
standing on the hearth-rug, a half-laugh in his eyes.

"Judith!"

"What is it?"

"The plain meaning of all this is, that there is no one who can do this
foul job to-morrow but Stephen Yarrow, and for my sake it must be done;
_ergo_--Well, well! You do love me, child!"

Her eyes filled with sudden tears; she caught hold of his arm, and clung
to it.

"I do love you, God knows! What is Stephen Yarrow to me, soul or body?
Don't be harsh with me, John!"

"Harsh? No, Judith," stroking the colorless curls gently; looking back;
thinking that she had done much for him; he would humor her whim, not
behave like a beast to _her_. But his brother--It would be better for
Stephen in the end. Certainly. Yet he sighed: a womanish, unable sigh.

A year or two afterwards, (for I am not writing of a fictitious
character,) this man's frauds were discovered. They were larger and more
uniformly successful than any that had ever been perpetrated in the
States, but there was about them a subtle, dogged daring that did not
belong to Yarrow's character, and shrewd people who had known them began
to talk of this shadow of a woman who went about with him,--a quadroon,
they said,--and hinted strongly that it was she who had been the vital
power of the partnership, and Yarrow but the well-chosen tool. There are
no means of knowing the truth of the conjecture, for Yarrow escaped: she
followed him, but is dead, so their secret is safe. Fraud, however, was
but one half of his story. Soule gave like a prince,--secretly, with a
woman-like, anxious helpfulness, a passionate eagerness, as if the pain
or want of a human being were insufferable to him. In this he was alone:
the woman had