a question--a dull welt of shame tingling on their
cheeks and hers as though some one had cut them with a whip--they knew
it was useless. The man had gone to America some months before, and
was beyond the reach of their justice.

But the child throve as if it had the fairest right to be in the
world, and was no little nameless waif whose very existence was a
shame. He was a beautiful boy, round and tender, with his mother's
dark-blue eyes, and the exquisite baby skin which is softer than any
rose-leaf. From very early days he crowed and chuckled and was a most
cheerful baby. Left alone in his cradle he would be quietly happy for
hours; he slept a great deal, and only announced his waking from sleep
by a series of delighted chuckles, which brought his mother running to
his side to hoist him in her arms.

He must have been about a year old when I first saw him. Maggie
intruded him on no one, though people said that if any one admired
her baby it made her their lover for life. I happened to be in the
Island for a while, and one evening on a solitary ramble round the
cliffs I came face to face with Maggie,--Maggie stepping high, and
prettier than ever with that rapt glory of maternity in her face which
made ordinary prettiness common beside her.

I saw by the way she wisped the shawl round her full white chin that I
was welcome to pass her if I would. But I did not pass her. I stopped
and spoke a little on indifferent topics, and then I asked for the
baby. A radiant glow of pleasure swept over the young mother's
healthily pale face. She untwisted the shawl and lifted a fold of it,
and stood looking down at the sleeping child with a brooding
tenderness, almost divine. He was indeed lovely, with the flush of
sleep upon him and one little dimpled hand thrust against her breast.
'What a great boy!' I said. 'But you must be half killed carrying
him.' She laughed out joyfully, a sweet ringing laughter like the
music of bells. 'Deed then,' she said, ''tis the great load he is
entirely, an' any wan but meself 'ud be droppin' under the weight of
him. But it 'ud be the quare day I'd complain of my jewel. Sure it's
the light heart he gives me makes him lie light in my arms.'

But Maggie's mother remained untouched by the child's beauty and
winsomeness. Mother and daughter lived in the same house absolutely
without speech of each other. The girl was gentleness and humility
itself. For her own part she never forgot she was a sinner