e old woman, who answered in a voice so hoarse and unnatural
that Maggie involuntarily shuddered, "Old Hagar would die inch by inch
sooner than tell you, Maggie Miller, her secret."

"Was it, then, so dreadful?" asked Maggie half fearfully, and casting
a stealthy glance at the dim woods, where the night shadows were
falling, and whose winding path she must traverse alone on her
homeward route. "Was it, then, so dreadful?"

"Yes, dreadful, dreadful; and yet, Maggie, I have sometimes wished
you knew it. You would forgive me, perhaps. If you knew how I was
tempted," said Hagar, and her voice was full of yearning tenderness,
while her bony fingers parted lovingly the shining hair from off the
white brow of the young girl, who pleaded again, "Tell it to me,
Hagar."

There was a fierce struggle in Hagar's bosom, but the night wind,
moving through the hemlock boughs, seemed to say, "Not yet--not yet";
and, remembering her vow, she answered: "Leave me, Maggie Miller, I
cannot tell you the secret. You of all others. You would hate me for
it, and that I could not bear. Leave me alone, or the sight of you, so
beautiful, pleading for my secret, will kill me dead."

There was command in the tones of her voice, and rising to her feet
Maggie walked away, with a dread feeling at her heart, a feeling which
whispered vaguely to her of a deed of blood--for what save this
could thus affect old Hagar? Her road home led near the little
burying-ground, and impelled by something she could not resist she
paused at her mother's grave. The moonlight was falling softly upon
it; and, seating herself within the shadow of the monument, she sat
a long time thinking, not of the dead, but of Hagar and the strange
words she had uttered. Suddenly, from the opposite side of the
graveyard, there came a sound as of someone walking; and, looking
up, Maggie saw approaching her the bent figure of the old woman, who
seemed unusually excited. Her first impulse was to fly, but knowing
how improbable it was that Hagar should seek to do her harm, and
thinking she might discover some clew to the mystery if she remained,
she sat still, while, kneeling on Hester's grave, old Hagar wept
bitterly, talking the while, but so incoherently that Maggie could
distinguish nothing save the words, "You, Hester, have forgiven me."

"Can it be that she has killed her own child!" thought Maggie, and
starting to her feet she stood face to face with Hagar, who screamed:
"You her