d
walked in. The only things remaining in the room were a broken table
and chair. She placed the violin on the floor and the candle on the
table. Then with a shudder Jinnie drew from her blouse an unopened
letter, studying it long in the flickering light. It had been written
in this very room three years before, and within its sealed pages lay
the whole secret which now none but the dead knew.

It took no effort on her part to bring back to her memory Jordan
Morse's handsome face and his rock-grey eyes, eyes like Bobbie's. He
and Bobbie had gone away together. She touched the corner of the
envelope to the candle, watching it roll over in a brown curl as it
burned.

"He's happy now," she murmured. "He's got his baby and Lafe's
angels."

Then she gathered up the handful of ashes, opened the window, and
threw them out. The hands of the night wind snatched them as they fell
and carried them swiftly away through the rain.

On her way to the attic stairs, she stood a minute before the window,
awe-stricken. From the north the great storm was advancing, and from
among the hills rolled the distant roar of thunder. It brought to her
mind the night when Peggy had gone into the life-valley and brought
back Lafe's baby; and she remembered, too, with a sob, Blind Bobbie,
and how she missed him. Ah, it was a lonely, haunted little spirit
that crept up the dark narrow stairs to the garret!

Only that the room seemed lower and more stuffy, it, too, was much the
same as she had left it. She brushed aside some silvery cobwebs,
raised the window, and sat down on a dilapidated trunk. On the floor
at her feet, almost covered with dust, was the old fairy book about
the famous kings. She picked it up mechanically. On the first page was
the man in the red suit, with the overhanging nose and fat body,--he
whom she at one time believed to be related to Theodore.

Again she was overwhelmed with her misery. Theodore belonged to
another woman, and Jinnie, alone with her past and an uncertain
future, sat staring dry-eyed into the stormy night.

CHAPTER L

"GOD MADE YOU MINE"

"I haven't seen any papers for three days, Molly. What's become of
them all?"

Theodore and Molly were sitting in the waning sunshine, the
many-colored autumn leaves drifting silently past them to form a
varied carpet over the grass.

All fear had now left the woman. She had Jinnie's promise not to see
Theodore, and he had apparently forgotten there ever