g loudly, insistently, as though demanding a
response. Absorbed in his own grief, into which he had relapsed upon
Carteret's departure, the sound was an unwelcome intrusion. Surely the
man could not be coming back! If it were some one else--What else might
happen to the doomed town concerned him not. His child was dead,--his
distracted wife could not be left alone.

The doorbell rang--clamorously--appealingly. Through the long hall and
the closed door of the room where he sat, he could hear some one
knocking, and a faint voice calling.

"Open, for God's sake, open!"

It was a woman's voice,--the voice of a woman in distress. Slowly Miller
rose and went to the door, which he opened mechanically.

A lady stood there, so near the image of his own wife, whom he had just
left, that for a moment he was well-nigh startled. A little older,
perhaps, a little fairer of complexion, but with the same form, the same
features, marked by the same wild grief. She wore a loose wrapper, which
clothed her like the drapery of a statue. Her long dark hair, the
counterpart of his wife's, had fallen down, and hung disheveled about
her shoulders. There was blood upon her knuckles, where she had beaten
with them upon the door. "Dr. Miller," she panted, breathless from her
flight and laying her hand upon his arm appealingly,--when he shrank
from the contact she still held it there,--"Dr. Miller, you will come
and save my child? You know what it is to lose a child! I am so sorry
about your little boy! You will come to mine!"

"Your sorrow comes too late, madam," he said harshly. "My child is dead.
I charged your husband with his murder, and he could not deny it. Why
should I save your husband's child?"

"Ah, Dr. Miller!" she cried, with his wife's voice,--she never knew how
much, in that dark hour, she owed to that resemblance--"it is _my_
child, and I have never injured you. It is my child, Dr. Miller, my only
child. I brought it into the world at the risk of my own life! I have
nursed it, I have watched over it, I have prayed for it,--and it now
lies dying! Oh, Dr. Miller, dear Dr. Miller, if you have a heart, come
and save my child!"

"Madam," he answered more gently, moved in spite of himself, "my heart
is broken. My people lie dead upon the streets, at the hands of yours.
The work of my life is in ashes,--and, yonder, stretched out in death,
lies my own child! God! woman, you ask too much of human nature! Love,
duty, sorrow, _justice