n will then take you both back to
South America. A totally impossible plan, but--"

"I marry Barton Holt! Why, I wouldn't marry him if he got down on his
knees. Why, I don't even remember what he looks like! Did you ever hear
of such impudence! What is he to me?" The outburst carried with it a
certain relief.

"What he is to you is not the question. It is what YOU are to Archie!
Your sin has been your refusal to acknowledge him. Now you are brought
face to face with the consequences. The world will forgive a woman all
the rest, but never for deserting her child, and that, my dear sister,
IS PRECISELY WHAT YOU DID TO ARCHIE."

Jane's gaze was riveted on Lucy. She had never dared to put this fact
clearly before--not even to herself. Now that she was confronted with
the calamity she had dreaded all these years, truth was the only thing
that would win. Everything now must be laid bare.

Lucy lifted her terrified face, burst into tears, and reached out her
hands to Jane.

"Oh, sister,--sister!" she moaned. "What shall I do? Oh, if I had never
come home! Can't you think of some way? You have always been so
good--Oh, please! please!"

Jane drew Lucy toward her.

"I will do all I can, dear. If I fail there is only one resource left.
That is the truth, and all of it. Max can save you, and he will if he
loves you. Tell, him everything!"

CHAPTER XXI

THE MAN IN THE SLOUCH HAT

The wooden arrow on the top of the cupola of the Life-Saving Station
had had a busy night of it. With the going down of the sun the wind had
continued to blow east-southeast--its old course for weeks--and the
little sentinel, lulled into inaction, had fallen into a doze, its
feather end fixed on the glow of the twilight.

At midnight a rollicking breeze that piped from out the north caught
the sensitive vane napping, and before the dawn broke had quite tired
it out, shifting from point to point, now west, now east, now
nor'east-by-east, and now back to north again. By the time Morgan had
boiled his coffee and had cut his bacon into slivers ready for the
frying-pan the restless wind, as if ashamed of its caprices, had again
veered to the north-east, and then, as if determined ever after to lead
a better life, had pulled itself together and had at last settled down
to a steady blow from that quarter.

The needle of the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room, and
in reach of everybody's eye, had also made a night of it. In fac