urself her husband, it would be
enough, quite enough, to let her die with her mind easy and her name
cleared,' says mother to him.

"Harry had no notion I took things so serious, but he supposed that my
mother had driven me to desperation by her reproaches, so he said he
would do as she wished, and mother fetched Violet Strachan, our cousin,
and a woman called Wilson, from next door to be witnesses, and he said
he was my husband, and I said I was his wife, in their presence. Harry
thought that was enough, but mother wanted to make it surer still, for
she wrote it out, and we all signed it, and here it is." Then Mrs. Peck
drew out this document from her bundle of papers.

"This is a marriage in Scotland. Without the paper it was a marriage,
but mother liked to see things in black and white. Harry never could
get out of it--though he said afterwards that he did not know what he
was about when he signed it.

"Of course after mother had carried her point I was allowed to get
well, but slowly, for the stuff had really half poisoned me. Harry was
in London with his brother when my boy Frank was born; but he came to
me as soon as he could, and by ill-luck it happened that the very day
he came my old sweetheart Jamie Stevenson was paying me a visit, and
Harry heard something that was not meant for him, and off he set
without seeing me or the child either. He sent me a letter, saying I
had cheated him first and last, and he would never look at me again."

"Then your boy was not Henry Hogarth's son," said Brandon, eagerly, who
thought he had got hold of the important part of the story, "but this
man Stevenson's?"

"You're quite out in your guesses, Mr. Brandon, for as clever as you
think yourself; it does not concern my story a bit, but I will say
this, that my Frank was Harry's own son."

"Then, were you married in this irregular way to Jamie Stevenson in the
first place?" said Brandon, who saw no prospect of proving the desired
non-cousinship.

"No, I wasn't. But Jamie was doing better in the world then, and he was
saying, thinking that I wasn't married, that for all that had come and
gone, if the father would provide for the bairn any way handsome, he'd
marry me yet, and I did not see much good in being the wife of a
gentleman that would always be ashamed of me, and never bring me
forward. Mother thought he would do that, but I knew the man better by
this time. So I was telling Jamie that if I had only thought he'd hav