le were allowed to do with the children
they did not wish to rear--expose it to its death before it had yet
touched food. But in the throes, as she thought, of its extremity,
the love of the mother prevailed over the hate of the wife, and with
a gush of tears she plucked the babe to her breast. Then the
neighbor, who out of pity and charity had nursed her in her dark
hour, ran for the priest, that with the blessing of baptism the child
might die a Christian soul.

The good man came, and took the little, sleep-bound body from
Rachel's arms, and asked her the name. She did not answer, and he
asked again. Once more, having no reply, he turned to the neighbor to
know what the father's name had been.

"Stephen Orry," said the good woman.

"Then Stephen Stephensen," he began, dipping his fingers into the
water; but at the sound of that name Rachel cried, "No, no, no."

"He has not done well by her, poor soul," whispered the woman; "call
it after her own father."

"Then Jorgen Jorgensen," the priest began again; and again Rachel
cried, "No, no, no," and raised herself upon her arm.

"It has no father," she said, "and I have none. If it is to die, let
it go to God's throne with the badge of no man's cruelty; and if it
is to live, let it be known by no man's name save its own. Call it
Jason--Jason only."

And in the name of Jason the child was baptised, and so it was that
Rachel, little knowing what she was doing in her blind passion and
pain, severed her son from kith and kin. But in what she did out of
the bitterness of her heart God himself had his own great purposes.

From that hour the child increased in strength, and soon waxed
strong, and three days after, as the babe lay cooing at Rachel's
breast, and she in her own despite was tasting the first sweet joys
of motherhood, the old mother of Stephen came to her again.

"This is my house," she said, "and I will keep shelter over your head
no longer. You must pack and away--you and your brat, both of you."

That night the Bishop of the island--Bishop Petersen, once a
friend of Rachel's mother, now much in fear of the Governor, her
father--came to her in secret to say that there was a house for her
at the extreme west of the fishing quarter, where a fisherman had
lately died, leaving the little that he had to the Church. There she
betook herself with her child as soon as the days of her lying-in
were over. It was a little oblong shed, of lava blocks laid with peat