me when I thought how happy ye'd be when I told ye; but I
ain't so sure 'bout Lucy. What do you think? Will she do what Bart
wants?"

"No," said Jane in a quiet, restrained voice; "she will not do it."

"Why?" said the captain in a surprised tone. He was not accustomed to
be thwarted in anything he had fixed his mind upon, and he saw from
Jane's expression that her own was in opposition.

"Because I won't permit it."

The captain leaned forward and looked at Jane in astonishment.

"You won't permit it!"

"No, I won't permit it."

"Why?" The word came from the captain as if it had been shot from a gun.

"Because it would not be right." Her eyes were still fixed on the
captain's.

"Well, ain't it right that he should make some amends for what he's
done?" he retorted with increasing anger. "When he said he wouldn't
marry her I druv him out; now he says he's sorry and wants to do
squarely by her and my hand's out to him. She ain't got nothin' in her
life that's doin' her any good. And that boy's got to be baptized right
and take his father's name, Archie Holt, out loud, so everybody kin
hear."

Jane made no answer except to shake her head. Her eyes were still on
the captain's, but her mind was neither on him nor on what fell from
his lips. She was again confronting that spectre which for years had
lain buried and which the man before her was exorcising back to life.

The captain sprang from his seat and stood before her; the words now
poured from his lips in a torrent.

"And you'll git out from this death blanket you been sleepin' under,
bearin' her sin; breakin' the doctor's heart and your own; and Archie
kin hold his head up then and say he's got a father. You ain't heard
how the boys talk 'bout him behind his back. Tod Fogarty's stuck to
him, but who else is there 'round here? We all make mistakes; that's
what half the folks that's livin' do. Everything's been a lie--nothin'
but lies--for near twenty years. You've lived a lie motherin' this boy
and breakin' your heart over the whitest man that ever stepped in shoe
leather. Doctor John's lived a lie, tellin' folks he wanted to devote
himself to his hospital when he'd rather live in the sound o' your
voice and die a pauper than run a college anywhere else. Lucy has lived
a lie, and is livin' it yet--and LIKES IT, TOO, that's the worst of it.
And I been muzzled all these years; mad one minute and wantin' to twist
his neck, and the next with my eyes runnin' te