and the
next day found her as usual on her way to the cottage. Bounding into
the room where the old woman sat at her knitting, she exclaimed: "I
know what it is! I know your secret!"

There was a gathering mist before Hagar's eyes, and her face was
deathly white, as she gasped: "You know the secret! How? Where? Have
the dead come back to tell? Did anybody see me do it?"

"Why, no," answered Maggie, beginning to grow a little mystified. "The
dead have nothing to do with it. You tried to poison me when I was a
baby, and that's what makes you crazy. Isn't it so? Grandma thought it
was, when I told her how you talked last night."

There was a heavy load lifted from Hagar's heart, and she answered
calmly, but somewhat indignantly, "So you told--I thought I could
trust you, Maggie."

Instantly the tears came to Maggie's eyes, and, coloring crimson, she
said: "I didn't mean to tell--indeed I didn't, but I forgot all about
your charge. Forgive me, Hagar, do," and, sinking on the floor,
she looked up in Hagar's face so pleadingly that the old woman was
softened, and answered gently: "You are like the rest of your sex,
Margaret. No woman but Hagar Warren ever kept a secret; and it's
killing her, you see!"

"Don't keep it, then," said Maggie. "Tell it to me. Confess that you
tried to poison me because you envied grandma," and the soft eyes
looked with an anxious, expectant expression into the dark, wild orbs
of Hagar, who replied: "Envy was at the bottom of it all, but I never
tried to harm you, Margaret, in any way. I only thought to do you
good. You have not guessed it. You cannot, and you must not try."

"Tell it to me, then. I want to know it so badly," persisted Maggie,
her curiosity each moment increasing.

"Maggie Miller," said old Hagar, and the knitting dropped from her
fingers, which moved slowly on till they reached and touched the
little snowflake of a hand resting on her knee--"Maggie Miller, if
you knew that the telling of that secret would make you perfectly
wretched, would you wish to hear it?"

For a moment Maggie was silent, and then, half laughingly, she
replied: "I'd risk it, Hagar, for I never wanted to know anything half
so bad in all my life. Tell it to me, won't you?"

Very beautiful looked Maggie Miller then--her straw flat set jauntily
on one side of her head, her glossy hair combed smoothly back, her
soft lustrous eyes shining with eager curiosity, and her cheeks
flushed with excitement. Very