d a door into the next room
and when I walked in, instead of seeing your father, I confronted a
haggard, death-stricken young woman sitting up in bed, her great eyes
bright with pain, her lips as white as her hollow cheeks, and her long,
black hair streaming over the pillow. The very sight of her struck a
knell to the little hope I had of soothing your father's sick bed and
forgiving him if he had done me any wrong.

"'Well, you came, as I thought you would,' said the girl, looking me
over from head to foot in a way that somehow made me burn with shame.
'Now sit down in that chair and hear what I've got to say while I've got
the strength to say it. I haven't the time nor the desire to put a gloss
on it. Aaron Boynton isn't here, as you plainly see, but that's not my
fault, for he belongs here as much as anywhere, though he wouldn't have
much interest in a dying woman. If you have suffered on account of him,
so have I and you haven't had this pain boring into you and eating your
life away for months, as I have.'

"I pitied her, she seemed so distraught, but I was in terror of her all
the same, and urged her to tell her story calmly and I would do my best
to hear it in the same way.

"'Calm,' she exclaimed, 'with this agony tearing me to pieces! Well, to
make beginning and end in one, Aaron Boynton was my husband for three
years.'

"I caught hold of the chair to keep myself from falling and cried: 'I do
not believe it!' 'Believe it or not, she answered scornfully, 'it
makes no difference to me, but I can give you twenty proofs in as many
seconds. We met at a Cochrane meeting and he chose me from all the
others as his true wife. For two years we travelled together, but long
before they came to an end there was no happiness for either of us.
He had a conscience--not much of a one, but just enough to keep him
miserable. At last I felt he was not believing the doctrines he preached
and I caught him trying to get news of you and your boy, just because
you were out of reach, and neglecting my boy and me, who had given up
everything to wander with him and live on whatever the brethren and
sisters chose to give us.'

"'So there was a child, a boy,' I gasped. 'Did--did he live?' 'He's
in the next room,' she answered, 'and it's him I brought you here for.
Aaron Boynton has served us both the same. He left you for me and me
for Heaven knows who. If I could live I wouldn't ask any favors, of you
least of all, but I haven't a pe